To Rule His Head
by CapturedTsunami
Summary: A year after his faked suicide Sherlock returns after realizing that John is dying. Further attempts on John's life draw the detective back into the Game even as he is forced to face his own humanity. Rated M for language, adult themes, eventual violence/ drug use. Romance/Friendship/Drama/Mystery/Angst. Probable Johnlock in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

It was Sunday.

Sherlock Holmes looked forward to Sundays. It was his favorite day of the week. Well, in addition to a few allotted hours on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Oh – and most of Thursday afternoon. Provided he was in town, of course.

It was the day he got to see John.

The time had long passed since he bothered trying to rationalize away the need to follow his former flatmate. It was something he simply _did_; it was a compulsion that must be followed at all costs. It rode him like some a disease. Too long without checking on his friend, without seeing his face as he turned it away from the rain, without seeing his familiar figure move from work to home to work again – and everything in between – well, too long without those things made Sherlock physically ill.

In the beginning he had observed John daily. Hourly. All but constantly. He had expected, correctly, that his friend would not handle his "death" well. He had set aside a significant amount of time to follow John around and make sure that the man was getting at least passable care from the others: comfort, food, water, at least the admonition to rest. Sherlock knew better than to expect John to sleep. He had not slept well even when Sherlock had been officially alive. Sherlock had never been much for sleeping but the prospect of a flatmate who did sleep and expected quiet in the deep hours of the night had momentarily alarmed the detective; alarmed him that is until the first time John had a nightmare.

That is when Sherlock had resumed practicing his violin at convenient odd hours in the morning.

At any rate when that time, a generous amount Sherlock had thought, was up he expected that John would be well on his way to putting his life back together, building something newer, something better. Something that didn't involve chasing murders through the streets of London and having bombs strapped to his chests by criminal masterminds. The doctor may have thrived on the danger but there was such a thing as too much, or so Sherlock told himself.

Sherlock found his fist unconsciously clenching as the memory of John, with that _bomb_ strapped to his chest, rose in his mind. With a deep breath, carefully exhaled, he banished it. He refused to dwell on it. John was safe. Sherlock had seen to that. He had beaten Moriarty at his own bloody game. The man was dead and Sherlock, supposedly, gone with him. Oh, John still helped out Lestrade every now and then but overall… overall his army doctor was disgustingly safe.

Except… except John had not moved on. He had failed to pull himself up and put his life together. He was the pre-Baker Street John: a beaten, weary man with scarcely a spark flickering inside him; naught but a brief flame wavering on the edge of utter extinction.

_No_, Sherlock admitted privately, _he is worse_.

He was not entirely sure why the compulsion to follow John existed; or rather he had yet to discover the most pressing reason for it. Was it to watch over John? Certainly. Initially. Was it some piss poor, invisible effort at apology; at redemption? Possibly. Probably. Was it a punishment? To himself? Most definitely.

So he still followed John.

Not all day, every day but most days. At least for a little bit. Just enough to make sure that the good doctor made it back to 221B safely. Unless he was so involved with a case that he completely forgot, which had happened on several occasions. Once, notably, he had gone seven weeks without following John. By the time he had returned to London after carefully unraveling a few threads in Moriarty's web he had been weak, sick, and shaking so badly it was like going through withdrawals all over again. Of course if he was having a rough go at it – and this was one of those things that he scarcely admitted to himself, even in his own head – he found that watching John sometimes helped him think.

But not Sundays.

Sundays were sacred to Sherlock. No matter how compelling the trail might me, how stiff the scent in his nose, if he was anywhere in England he managed to tear himself away. Sundays were for him. On Sundays he followed John.

In the dark of the night, in those brief moments of twilight before he slipped into a few hours of sleep, when not even his own mind was paying all that much attention Sherlock could admit to himself that he had found something, _someone_, more important to him than his work.

_Stop being soooo SILLY Sherrrlock! _Moriarty's voice giggled in his head_. You JUUUHMPED off of a buildING for him!_

Sherlock shifted deeper into the curve of the building from where he was keeping an eye on the door of 221B and tried to ignore the voice in his head. A light shiver, likely caused more by the hysterical round of giggles that his meager attempts elicited than by the stiff breeze that twisted down the street, made him turn up his coat collar. He spared the sky a glance and pursed his lips in a flash of annoyance. Since he had left his flat it had clouded over: great black clouds filled the sky, covering the earth in a stifling blanket. His nostril twitched and his grimace deepened. Rain. It was coming. Not unexpected, given that he lived in London and it was springtime, but he had been in a hurry this morning and had left his scarf in his flat. Sherlock Holmes hated having a cold neck.

_MORiaRTY saaaat on a WALL! Sherrrlock HOLMES haad a great FALL! _

Sherlock ground his teeth together and tried to focus on the door across the street. If John kept up his usual schedule (likely) he would be out shortly.

_Annnnd all LEHstrade's HORses aaaannnd ALL Mycroft's men,_ sang Moriarty as he skipped in gleeful circles 'round and 'round in Sherlock's head.

"Shut UP!" Sherlock hissed. It was scarcely a parting of lips, a bare movement of air but the flexing of his vocal chords let him know that that he had, in fact, spoken out loud. He clamped his lips together and felt his face shift into an unmistakable glare.

Movement in front of 221B saved him from further entangling himself in a furious mental confrontation with the ghost of a mind nearly as brilliant as his own. Sherlock felt every fiber of his being snap to immediate attention as John Watson stepped out onto the street. He barely caught himself as his body surged in an unconscious step forward. This was likely the closest, and the best, view Sherlock would have of him until he visited the cemetery. He always did on Sundays. But even then, though closer, his view would be somewhat obstructed by the trees and carefully pruned shrubbery he was forced stand behind.

_Clothes loose. Head down. Stumbles on steps. Cane. Skin pale. Hands shaking. Hair unruly. Limp. Moves slowly. Shadows under eyes. Hollowed cheeks. Clothing: clean, but beginning to look tattered._

_Not good John_. _Bit not good, _Sherlock thought, seeing his friend. He still wasn't eating. They hadn't even gotten to John's usual late lunch with Sarah and already Sherlock could tell that he wasn't eating. Again. Not that he had eaten much since the Fall, but this… no, if asked right now John probably didn't even remember the last thing he ate or when he had eaten it. _Damn it_, he swore. The doctor was down at least two stone and five and it was showing. John was of a shorter, stockier build and the loss of that much mass made him look sickly and weak. If he was being honest, John looked like a man halfway to death. The limp, the pale skin, the dull eyes, the way his cheeks had sunken in – none of it did anything to dissuade Sherlock otherwise.

He had taken a suicidal leap to save this man's life and instead of living John was, in fact, dying.

Sherlock felt all the blood leave his face as that inevitable deduction crossed his mind.

Something unpleasant burned in his throat and he swallowed convulsively, vainly trying to regain his ability to breathe. He tried for anger, reached for it. How _dare _John Watson throw his life away? How dare he squander the gift that Sherlock had bought him at the expense of his own life?

He couldn't quite grasp it though. No matter how hard he reached the searing, white hot flame was perpetually just out of his grasp. Instead he was left feeling rather like someone had broken something in his chest. He did not understand it, not quite. He remembered all too well, however, what it had felt like to see John with that bomb strapped to his chest; to see him held at gunpoint and to know that somewhere out there was an assassin with instructions to put a bullet in John's head. These memories provoked a wellspring of emotions that he had not experienced before and as thus had been catalogued and stored most carefully. Honestly, he did not think he could delete them even if he tried and he was not entirely sure why that was.

Oh, he had an inkling of course: a faint half formed deduction buzzing around his head like a mad little fly - inescapable and bloody impossible to catch, but…

For the first time Sherlock thought, _really_ thought. He had taken a leap from the rooftop of Bart's because the idea of John being killed was simply unacceptable. It was an impossibility in the world of Sherlock. It was something that Sherlock would prevent at all costs. But what… what would he have done if it had been him on the street watching John Watson leap from the top of the building? How would his life have unfolded if it had been him sprinting across the street to where John lay, oozing blood and apparently very, very dead? What if he had been the one looking down as they turned the body over, John's blue eyes staring blank and unseeing up at him?

Sherlock, having begun moving slowly down the street halted suddenly as his mind played those thoughts back at him as brilliant high def images. His entire body broke out in a cold sweat so thick that he could feel it instantly beginning to pool between his shoulder blades and trickle down the suddenly cold skin of his back. His stomach heaved and it was only through careful, controlled breathing that he managed to keep himself from turning and being violently ill into a nearby planter of newly potted petunias.

_Christ_, he swore to himself as he watched John limp slowly down the street over the bloodless white ridge of his knuckles, both suddenly weakened and stunned by force of his body's reaction. _Jesus fucking Christ_. The words exploded in his mind with a staggering vehemence and they surprised him. He took half a second to catalog his reaction, storing it away to muse over later when his mind was not quite so occupied. It would end up being just another puzzle piece whirring around in his head, another piece that he couldn't quite make fit and would frustrate him an inordinate amount, but it was information all the same. Eventually, he would have enough information to put the puzzle together.

_ORRdiNAAAry! _That damned voice sang.

Sherlock forced himself upright but kept his clenched fist pressed against his mouth, the pressure against his lips another soldier in the battle of forcing the sudden rise of bile back down his throat. A couple coming out of the shop gave him funny looks as they passed, taking a wide detour around his figure. He dully supposed it was because he must look exactly how he felt: like a man trying desperately not to lose his breakfast all over his shoes.

Moriarty smirked knowingly and finished his disgustingly clever little chant: _Couldn't put John TOgether AGAIN!_

For once Sherlock found no desire to quiet the hysterical voice that danced and smirked its way around the inside of his skull. _No_, he realized sadly, _Moriarty is all too correct_.

"Oh John," he whispered, unable to keep a small thread of panic from his voice, "What am I to do about you?"


	2. Chapter 2

The nauseated feeling was still there when he finally sat down in the restaurant at mid-afternoon. It had persisted with an unexpected intensity and it gave a startling, gagging lurch every now and then. Usually after one of those mentally conjured pictures of a dead John managed to escape their file and flash themselves before his eyes. Sherlock pressed his lips together against the latest attempt of digestive rebellion and let his gaze flicker up over the edge of the menu he clutched in his hands.

He was seated at, presumably, the worst table in the house. It was back next to the kitchen where the swinging doors that led between the front and back of the house obscured the fact that someone was sitting in the far corner. Between that, the small decorative wall dividing dining areas, and the fact that John not only sat with his back partially to Sherlock but that the doctor had showed an increasing tendency to not ever entirely raise his head made the detective reasonably sure that his presence would go unnoticed.

_BORRRRRING! _

The waiter cleared his throat, again. "Have you decided what you'll be having?" the question was phrased politely but tone clearly had a thread of "piss off" braided in it. Sherlock spared him a cursory glance and narrowly resisted the urge to dismantle the idiot, to completely undo him and reduce him to nothing but a tirade of blistering, uncaring statements. It would surely attract attention. It usually did.

The memory rose unbidden, John's voice drifting towards him in the darkness of the cab.

_That ... was amazing._

_ Do you think so? _Sherlock heard his own voice echoing back. Something sat up abruptly amid the neatly ordered facts and observations stocked in his mind, alert as a meerkat. What was _that_ in his voice? Sherlock made note to go back and review the conversation in more detail when he didn't have a university drop out with a coke problem tapping his foot - shoved into worn shoes that were a size to small - impatiently as he waited for Sherlock's order.

"Just the soup special," Sherlock replied, forcing his voice out as a tenor. It stung his vocal cords but the deep rumble of his natural baritone was distinctive and easily recognizable by those who knew him in life. John especially. In the beginning Sherlock had nearly given himself away more than once by being forced to speak where John could hear.

"And to drink?" the waiter asked, furiously scribbling the order down on the notepad – as if trying to convince Sherlock that "the soup special" was perhaps the most difficult order given in the history of the restaurant. Idiot. He was just pissed off that Sherlock was sitting in his section and keeping him from texting his dealer.

"Just water."

The waiter – Tim, his nametag said – took the folded menu from Sherlock. "It will be a few minutes for that soup."

Sherlock ignored him and took a small sip of the cold water, the faint acidity of a lemon tickling along his tongue and down the back of his throat. He shivered as the cold liquid hit his stomach.

_Should have ordered tea_, he reflected. But tea made him think of John - John who had always made the detective's tea exactly the way he preferred, often without even being asked. Silly, really; everything made Sherlock think of John. Sherlock raised his eyes again and looked to where John sat waiting with a terrible stillness that implied he would wait there for a designated amount of time regardless of whether his date showed up or not. Sherlock's mind showed him a picture of that wheat-and-gray hair plastered to the wet pavement and stained with blood that was still warm and wet.

_No,_ he amended quickly as he took another sip, _water is just fine._

After lowering the glass back to the tabletop he raised his long fingers and steepled them in front of lips. The barest tips of his fingers brushed up against his nose as he stared across the restaurant and turned his attention back to his newest, and most pressing, problem.

_John Watson is dying_.

He forced past it the hard knot and the bile that suddenly appeared in his throat, forced himself to say it clearly in his head. Step one was identifying the problem. Then he could move on to step two and _solve_ it. It was no good to try and move on without a proper step one or else step two had no hope of being properly executed.

_Executed. Stop. Poor choice of words._

How could he have missed this? How could _he_ have _missed_ the fact that John was dying? This sort of deterioration didn't just happen overnight. This was the level of health one saw in cancer patients who had weeks left to live. No, this… this had been happening for some time. So how did he miss it?

Was it perhaps that he was too close? Had his compulsion to follow John and keep him safe lead him, in fact, to miss the clear knowledge that John was slipping into deeper danger?

He had expected that the limp would return. He had hoped that it wouldn't, but had expected it. After all it had been being with Sherlock that had cured the limp in the first place and with Sherlock gone it was only rational to expect it to return on some level. He had expected the poor sleeping habits – John's had never been good. But this… _this_ was worse. With the exception of the ending date John's grief had played out much like Sherlock had expected.

Everything except for the depth of it.

Sherlock glared into the soup bowl that Tim set in front of him. The depth… he didn't understand. He had no point of reference. No data that would allow him to come to a conclusion on the matter. His lurching stomach indicated clearly how the thought of burying John sat with him – it was why he jumped off of a bloody building after all – but…

_Caring is not an advantage, _a small voice whispered_, and you could _never_ care enough. You are broken._

_Freak, _Sally's voice echoed.

_Psychopath_, Anderson sneered.

_OrdiNARY! _Moriarty called, not to be outdone.

Sherlock pushed the voices away and tried to order his thoughts into some sort of list. He liked lists. They gave him logical order, a framework that he could work with. It gave him data. Data was good. Data would lead to conclusions, conclusions to results. Result? John Watson lived.

Results were good.

_BRILLiant deduction, _Moriarty drawled. _Honestly. The mind power exhibited there was RIVETING._

Sherlock inhaled until his nostrils collapsed inward, blocking the further inflow of air and forced himself to keep his hands laid flat on the tabletop. It was either that or clench them into fists until his palms bled from injuries inflicted by his own nails, which would be no mean feat considering how stubby they were. Sherlock ground his teeth and felt his lips twist into a grimace of frustration. There was something… something else. _God damn it John, _his mind screamed,_ I want you to live! Why won't you live?_

A high pitched giggle ratcheted around until nothing but an endless echo of that infernal sound filled his ears. _You SEE but yooooouuuu do not OBSERVE! _

Sherlock was very much beginning to regret that he had not strangled Moriarty with his own hands instead of letting the man blow his own brains out. Maybe then he wouldn't be running a front row commentary - complete with applause and cat calls - on Sherlock's every move and thought.

Once again, however, he had the nagging feeling that, dead as he was, Moriarty was right. Sherlock was missing something.

And meanwhile, John was dying.

* * *

Sarah was exactly nine minutes and twenty-one seconds late and Sherlock felt his face twisting into a sneer of disgust as she seated herself across from John. Honestly, Sherlock was more than a little surprised that Sarah had consented to go out with John after all the nonsense she had been through with the – what had John called it? – _The Blind Banker_ case. He could only put it down as some ridiculous hormone induced infatuation and perhaps a hope that things would be better now with the consulting detective out of the picture. She was obviously still attracted to John. This was easily deduced by the freshly applied makeup and the neckline that dipped a hair lower than the socially acceptable norm and put her breasts on a display that any heterosexual man would be hard put to ignore.

Once John would have been on his feet before she arrived at the table, pulling her chair out for her. John was a gentleman. The fact that he didn't even try was another alarming observation that Sherlock filed away. Point of fact, the doctor barely looked up in response to Sarah's greeting.

Sarah flashed him a big grin as she took her seat and leaned over the table, placing her hand on his arm. "Good afternoon John, enjoying your day off?" The restaurant was empty enough that Sherlock could hear her just fine.

_Of course it helps that she is obnoxiously loud_, the detective mused.

John tilted his head and gave her a smile that was nothing more than a ghost of the smiles that Sherlock had once sat across the table from. "Of course," his voice was quieter but Sherlock had long ago accepted that he seemed to have developed an extraordinarily heighted sense of hearing where John was concerned. "Just been out and about enjoying the day," he added. Sarah gave him a long, measuring look and then settled back in her chair. She took her hand with her.

_Tightness around lips. Narrowing of eyes. Removal of hand. Sitting up straight._

Sherlock felt an eyebrow rise. _Interesting,_ he mused to himself. _And just how many more Sunday outings are you going to subject us to, darling Sarah, before you give up completely?_

_And what is poooor John going to do once Sarah abandons him just like you DID?_

Sherlock ignored the nasty little voice in the back of his head. He really should have strangled dear old Jim and maybe beat his head into the rooftop for good measure…

_Good Lord, where was _that _coming from?_ He went back to pushing the soup around in the bowl while John and Sarah eased into the slightly awkward routine of ordering food and talking. John pretended that he was okay and Sarah pretended that she believed him. Eventually they settled in to talking about work. Both expressed a disgusting amount of relief that flu season appeared to be officially over, having gone an entire week without a new case coming into the office.

Sherlock settled in to listen with one ear and gave up the charade of pointlessly shoving the soup around with his spoon. He couldn't eat. He just couldn't. Not until he made sense of all the information in his head. Somewhere in there, somewhere in the mass of lists, thoughts, sights, sounds, and even feelings was the key to saving his doctor.

He had to figure it out. He had to.

Or else he would never get Moriarty out of his head.

* * *

It was well and truly raining by the time they arrived at Sherlock's grave. Even with the collar of his coat turned up his neck was still annoyingly damp. Cold and damp. No doubt courtesy of the cursed little branch that twisted just _so_ as to allow the drizzle to turn into a steady stream that kept trying to worm its way down his back no matter how he turned. He stood in his patch of trees and watched John make his way to the dark arch of his headstone. He shifted slightly, stepping partly out from under the cover of the foliage. He trusted the darkness of his coat and the overcast sky to keep him from being spotted. He had much preferred the original watching spot but he had spent so much time there that he had begun to wear a noticeable patch in the grass. Likely enough, it was only he that noticed but Sherlock couldn't take that risk. He had been more rash and thoughtless before, assuming himself protected by his brilliance, and look where that had gotten him.

His lips pressed together as he stared at John through the drizzle. _Look at where it as gotten us_, he corrected silently.

John stopped to the side of Sherlock's grave and stooped painfully to remove the wilted bunch of flowers from the tombstone's base. He replaced them with another bunch, just as he did every week. This time it was orchids, their delicate silver-white petals shot through with veins of an eggplant purple. The look on his face was the same as it was every time he came here. Oh, to be sure he acted differently upon occasion. Sometimes he ranted. In the beginning he had frequently broken down and screamed hysterically at the headstone until he turned his voice raw and raspy. Sometimes he sat next to the stone and talked to Sherlock; talked to him much as if they were sitting in their chairs in the living room of 221B. Then there were the times when he stood there and did nothing, said nothing. Those were the worst. Especially because such times usually resulted in tears flowing down John's cheeks until they dripped in a steady stream to dampen clothes, skin, and earth.

The ones that made it the ground covering Sherlock's grave always hit him straight in the chest and made it impossible for him to breathe. This, of course, was entirely ridiculous. A few tears falling on the grass several meters away absolutely did not have the physical force to stop his lungs.

But they did anyway.

Through the rain Sherlock could see John inhale sharply. The breath caused his body to hitch, and the sharp jerking movement eased into a round of shivers that made his hand shake dreadfully as he reached out and laid it on the headstone.

"Sherlock." A single word uttered softly. There was… _something_ in John's voice. Something that made Sherlock's heart stop right in his chest. It was an unpleasant sensation. One made increasingly more so by his body's insistence that his blood must keep moving. "I don't think I can do this anymore. I don't … I…" John's head moved just enough to resemble a shake. "I was so alone and you saved me…" his voice broke and his hand convulsed, tightening across the top of the stone until his knuckles flashed bright white against the shined black expanse of the marker. "… but you're still dead," he finished weakly. "You're still dead and I am once again so very alone." He paused again with his head tilted toward the stone. It was as if somewhere in John's mind there was a physical presence: something solid, something _real_ that he could lean against. "I don't think I can do this anymore Sherlock," he whispered dully, "I really don't."

He was silent after that but he did not move for a long, long time. Neither did Sherlock. John stood, head bowed, with one hand on the stone and the other hanging limply at his side with his cane barely grasped between sturdy, callused fingers. Sherlock watched from his half-exposed hiding place, one foot unconsciously placed forward in a stride that would have led him straight to John.

As he stood frozen, unable to act, unable to even glance away Sherlock found an undying gratitude for the rain. For once it had a use. It soaked John's hair and streamed down his cheeks, hiding the tears that mingled there. If it performed a similar task upon Sherlock's face – well, that was something Sherlock would not admit. Not here. Not now. Not as he watched the man standing before him give up all hope and then turn and walk away.

His heart was still refusing to beat.

* * *

John stopped for milk on the way home. Sherlock had half hoped that he would come out with food as well. He had eaten so little at his meal with Sarah. No more than a handful of child-sized bites. John had been in and out of the shop in just a few scarce minutes, though, emerging with exactly what he had gone in for: a single carton of milk. It was just enough for use in a week's worth of tea and nothing more. No bread for toast, no jam, no eggs, no bacon… nothing. Absolutely nothing but milk.

_Damn it, John._

He paused, just in the circle of light outside of the shop's doors and spared a quick glance for the persistent, unending drizzle falling from the heavens. His shoulders heaved, rolling with a sigh that, when finished, seemed to have made the doctor even smaller and more withdrawn. Sherlock let out a small sigh of his own as he peeled away from the shadows in which he hid and followed John as the doctor turned and began moving down the street opposite him, heading straight for home.

Sherlock almost didn't see him.

He had been standing in the shadows of an alleyway a short walk around the corner from the shop. He moved slowly out of the darkness and raised his hand, his lips moving as he called out.

_Large. Two meters. Head shaved. Gold ring, left ear. _

The hoarse cry for help brought John to an instant halt and the doctor turned, taking a step into the darkness.

"No, no, no," Sherlock whispered, catching a tell-tale curl of fingers and flex in the man's leg muscles as he stepped closer to the lit street. "John!" he shouted, the name ripping itself from his vocal cords.

John froze mid-stride and his head started to turn back towards Sherlock.

Too late, too late… the man's fist smashed into John's face and his knee took the doctor square in the stomach a half second later. For just a split second Sherlock caught the ghost of the solider John had been flicker over him, muscles screaming to attention as he both collapsed and rolled away.

But then his blogger froze.

Halfway through the reflexive tumble that might have saved him, John froze. He stopped and turned, staring up into the face the loomed over him, a peculiar expression of peace passing over his face. His muscles eased. The soldier passed. Sherlock's ears caught the soft grunt that John made as the man's booted foot… _black, military issue_… smashed into his chest.

But by then Sherlock was already moving.


	3. Chapter 3

The detective didn't become fully aware of his body's actions until he was halfway across the street. His coat flared around his hips as the long length of his legs carried him across the distance separating him from the man who was now standing on John's throat with a terrible finality. Some distant corner of his mind proposed that he really should be thinking this over. He was supposed to be dead after all.

_Dead, dead, DEAD! _Moriarty chirped unhelpfully.

He ignored both mind and Moriarty. The only thing that mattered was that John was dying - dying a great deal more quickly than he had been this afternoon. While the detective still had no idea what to do about _that_ it was certainly within his power to do something about _this._

At the last second the man… _Fifteen stone. Scarred lip. Knife cut likely. No. Razor blade. Tattoo. Neck. Amateur. Likely prison. Good health. Skin pale. Extended time indoors. Recent release_ …seemed to realize that his attack of the unassuming doctor had not gone unnoticed. A flicker of annoyance and then acceptance crossed his face. He turned, shifting his body to accept Sherlock's onslaught while maintaining the press of his boot against John's windpipe. One hand began to move, reaching behind him.

_Clean clothes. Frayed cuffs. Ill-fit. Armed. Gun. Small of back. Knife. Right jacket pocket. _

Sherlock didn't bother to slow as he approached and slammed with careful calculation into the broad body of John's attacker. It was dangerous, risky. It left him vulnerable to a return attack; demanded it really. In fact, for a moment it left him all but defenseless but it was the quickest way to get him off John. The attacker was bigger than Sherlock, likely stronger, and more solid. But his center of gravity was off. His balance on the earth slightly more tenuous than it should have been, disrupted by the stance that was killing John.

As expected the man's arm rose, gripping Sherlock around the neck as the two men tripped and stumbled their way off of John's still form. Sherlock twisted slightly at the last moment before the powerful forearm pulled him backwards, forcing the attacker to cut off the detective's air supply instead of the blood flow to his brain.

_Can't breathe. Ignore. Average time without oxygen until loss of consciousness: forty seconds. _

He ignored the instinct to survive, refused to give into the primal scream of his body to fight and free itself. He noted in passing that it wasn't that much different than ignoring his body's need to eat and sleep. He willed his flesh to keep still, to submit. He knew, and was practiced, in a half dozen different ways to get out of this exact situation. The little incident in Soo Lin's flat had pointed out a glaring hole in his knowledge of hand to hand combat. A half dozen choices and he had no desire to use any of them. They were designed to free him, to give him a chance at escape. Sherlock didn't want escape. He wasn't after something as simple as _survival_. No, he was after a more elusive prey: _pain_.

Forcing his body to remain calm – _thirty more seconds_ - he reached up and grasped one of the man's fingers in his own slender grip. He felt the flicker of puzzlement move through the attacker's body at this unexpected action and Sherlock felt himself grin. He wrenched the finger backwards with enough force to not only break it was a gratifyingly pleasant _snap _but to nearly press the surface of his nail… _Clean. Knife shaved…_ against the back of the man's hand.

Unsurprisingly, the man screamed.

The moment his grip on Sherlock's throat loosened he was moving again. The detective was modestly proficient in multiples styles of hand to hand combat but boxing was perhaps his favorite. Likely because it had been the first he had learned and the memory of breaking Mycroft's nose during training one day was particularly gratifying. His first blow landed while he was still moving: an undercut to the jaw that landed with a sickening thud and pop. _Dislocated jaw._ The second and third blows were to the stomach; the fourth a sharp jab at his kidneys. The man wheezed and Sherlock could feel his stomach heaving, could hear the gagging sound rumbling around in the back of his throat.

If he was playing fair he might have stopped but Sherlock had no interest in playing fair. This man had dared to hurt John. That was a crime most heinous and something that he could not let go unpunished. _Pain._ He gripped the unsteady man by the front of his coat and hauled him to his feet. Sherlock then took the required half step and slammed him into the brick of the wall behind them with enough force that he could hear the man's teeth rattle against his jaw.

"If you wish to survive this night, pray he is not dead," he hissed through sore vocal cords. It sounded dark to his ears, scratchy and a full octave lower than normal. More than that there was that _something_ again: something that sent a chill running up and down his spine. He pulled the attacker down and introduced the front of his face to his kneecap.

_Nose broken. Stunned._ _What was the phrase?_ _Ah yes, the more the merrier._ _More introductions needed. _He slammed the man's head to the pavement. He went instantly and utterly still beneath Sherlock's hands. _Unconscious. Concussion likely._

Sherlock let go of him as soon as he went limp, the body hitting the damp pavement with a thud. A twist, a swirl of his coat, two steps, and down he went at John's side. "John? John, can you hear me? John?" Sherlock frantically tugged the glove from one hand and placed his fingertips at John's throat. For a second he felt a cold, drenching fear run through his veins like ice water as he searched and found nothing. _Wait. There. _The doctor's pulse twitched faintly beneath his touch. "Thank god," Sherlock sighed, rocking back on his heels.

Two steps brought him back to the attacker's side. "You are lucky," he whispered in the attacker's ear. "If he were dead you would have followed. Messily. And not quickly." Sherlock felt his lips twist in a frighteningly feral snarl. "As is," he continued, fighting for control, "you live only because John is a good man." He rose and stared thoughtfully down at the unconscious body for a moment before adding, "I am not." Sherlock's foot came down on the elevated length of the attacker's tibia and he smirked as he was rewarded with the distinct noise of a bone snapping. It echoed through the air like a miniature gun shot. It was beautiful and perfect.

_Incapacitated. Threat negated._

Back at John's side Sherlock crouched, gently searching his body for injuries that would make it impossible to move the doctor. The light in the alley was poor and ill suited for medical evaluation. The street was currently empty, or at least empty enough that no one else had noticed the struggle in the alley. Sherlock doubted it would stay that way for long. It was late but not _that_ late. He needed to move John and get him someplace safe.

"Don't." Sherlock stilled, his eyes locking on John's lips. He sat frozen, staring at the doctor's lips unsure if he had really heard the man's voice or if he was just imagining it in his head – something not entirely out of the realm of possibility. His nights were plagued by John's cries.

_No. Don't. No. SHERLOCK!_

"Don't…" Sherlock's brain snapped back to attention, sure this time. The doctor's lips had moved. His voice was different. Raspy. Breathless. Hollow. Sherlock fought the rising urge to get up and go stand on the other man's throat for a while to see if _he_ liked it. "Why?" John struggled to take a deep breath, a flash of pain whisking across his face.

_Difficulty breathing. Chest not holding shape. Broken rib. Multiple fractures likely._

"Why… stop?" John wheezed out, his voice catching. "Finish. Just finish. Let… me… die." Sherlock's heart rate skyrocketed and he doubled over John's body, his forehead all but touching John's jumper. He had to remember how to breathe; had to force his body to draw air into his lungs: air that smelled of John. "Please," added John, his voice fading as he slid back towards unconsciousness. "Finish."

Sherlock gagged. The harsh acidity of bile filled his mouth and seeped around his teeth until his cheeks extended like a chipmunk's. Through sheer force of will he kept his mouth closed, teeth so tightly clenched that his jaw burned with the effort. He scrambled again, fingers going to the pulse point on John's neck. His relief at finding his blogger's pulse still beating steadily, if more slowly than he would have liked, beneath his touch was so strong that he almost passed out. Instead, he gave his head a little shake and forced more air into his lungs.

"Oh, John," his voice broke. There were other words, other things he wanted to say. So many things; so many explanations. Sherlock did not trust himself to speak. Not yet. Not right now with John's words still echoing in his ears. No. Now - now was the time for getting John away from here.

Tenderly, with the care than a mother might show towards her newborn child, he gathered John into his arms and rose somewhat shakily to his feet. He had thought, _planned_, to take John to a hospital. Certainly with the injuries the doctor had sustained he needed medical attention. Laying the doctor in a more visible spot and calling for an ambulance – _that_ would be the best option. It would get John to safety and to care and allow Sherlock to slip away, to vanish before watching eyes noticed his presence and put more of a target on John's back.

In his arms John twitched, just barely. It was a tiny shiver of life that moved the older man's face into the folds of Sherlock's jacket.

_No, _Sherlock decided as he stared hungrily down into John's face, _no doctors. _It did not surprise him to find that he was already moving, striding purposefully down the street with John clutched carefully to his chest. "Home, John," he whispered into the other man's hair. "I'm taking you Home."


	4. Chapter 4

It was easier than Sherlock had expected to get into 221B Baker Street. For starters, he had managed to make it all the way up to the door without anyone noticing the fact that he was carrying an unconscious man in his arms. Sherlock wasn't sure to what higher power or twist of chance he owed the temporary blindness and distraction of neighborhood busy bodies, but he was grateful for it. Odds were that there was some brilliant new show on the telly.

The real problem had arrived at the front door. Oh, Sherlock still had his key - and failing that he had a small kit of lock picks tucked into his jacket pocket - but it was the actual act of getting the door open without causing John any more discomfort and injury that posed a dilemma for Sherlock. It had taken more than a few minutes of maneuvering John's body before the two men ended up in a position that allowed Sherlock to fish his key out of his trouser pocket and start fiddling with the door. Another precious minute was lost to getting the key in the lock. A different position would have been less awkward but this one let him keep John cradled to his chest with one hand, the older man's diminished weight half supported by the knee that Sherlock had raised and braced against the frame of the door. It was a position that kept John steady and safe but it also meant that Sherlock had to some creative maneuvering around the curve of his thigh to unlock the door.

"Finally," he muttered as the lock clicked. He kept the key gripped between his fingers and carefully returned his arm to the purpose of supporting John's body. When he was sure that his blogger was secure he carefully lowered his leg and nudged the door open with his shoulder. He took the stairs one at a time. It was more important that John be kept still than it was for him to get into the flat quickly.

Of course, in the interest of being honest with himself, he was unsure if he would have been able to move up the stairs with his former quickness anyway. He had not been back inside 221B since the day of his suicide. More than once he had been tempted to slip back in and check on John, especially in the beginning when his compulsion was almost irresistibly strong. He had managed to control himself. Barely. Returning to Baker Street would have been disastrously dangerous: for Sherlock that he might be seen by the Met or by Moriarty's flunkies, but more even more dangerous for John. Emotional damage to John aside, for Sherlock to have been seen around Baker Street would have drawn the rest of Moriarty's sharks like proverbial blood in the water.

Sebastian Moran had watched John through the sights of his gun twice before. Sherlock wasn't going to give him the chance to do it again.

Sherlock had been forced to jump from that building, yes it was true, but he had done it on his terms. He had survived. He had beaten Moriarty. His friends had survived. _John_ had survived. Moriarty had not come out of the encounter so lightly and Sherlock knew, even more so now after all these months of meticulously, painstakingly hunting down thread after thread of the mighty web James Moriarty had spun, that those whom Jim had bought and paid for tended to stay bought. It was almost admirable in a senseless sort of way. Loyal beyond death they hated Sherlock for causing Moriarty's death. They despised Sherlock for _killing_ him - never mind that the mastermind had pulled the trigger himself. Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, _John_… they were all still alive because Moriarty's agents believed that Sherlock really had lost his life there on the cold pavement. They knew the deal that Moriarty had offered him: Sherlock's death in exchange for the lives of his three friends. As long as they still believed Sherlock to be dead then Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and John remained safe from vengeful actions.

_There's no stopping them now_.

Sherlock shivered as Moriarty's voice ran the length of his spine.

_I am you – prepared to do anything; prepared to burn; prepared to do what ordinary people won't do._ Sherlock's own voice whispered back, a tiny little spark against the darkness that clouded his brain. _You want me to shake hands with you in hell? I shall not disappoint you._

"I've spent a lot of time in hell, John," Sherlock murmured as he let himself into the living room of 221B, his face practically buried in the soft, short strands of the doctor's hair. "So much time and still it has not been enough."

For a moment he debated about taking John into one of the bedrooms - surely a bed would be more comfortable for him – but in the end he ultimately decided that the sofa would probably be better. He could always move John later but for now the sofa provided him the best opportunity to get a look at the other man's injuries and take a look around the flat that they had once shared.

John whimpered a bit as Sherlock set him down, his fingers convulsing around the damp fabric of the younger man's coat. "Shhh… John," Sherlock soothed, the words falling unexpectedly and unbidden from his lips. "You are safe. You are…" his voice trailed off and he sank to his knees beside the couch. "I'm here, John," he finally whispered, covering John's hand with one of his own. "I'm here." Beneath his touch the doctor stilled and tension leaked out of his form as he slipped back under.

John's medical kit was where he had always kept it. Sherlock collected it, a small pile of washcloths, and a bowl of warm water and brought them all back to the living room. He took off his coat, still damp from the rain, and laid it gently over one of the kitchen chairs so that any moisture might fall to the floor where it could be wiped up instead of dripping onto the sofa or one of the upholstered chairs. He made note of interesting details as they popped out at him but for once in his life he had no interest in _observing_. Taking care of John took priority over everything else, even the chorus of voices in the back of his head that clamored in their curiosity to read the past months of John's life as it was written here in the heart of their existence.

Sherlock sank but to heels at John's side and watched the unconscious man closely for a moment. He was torn between worry and gratefulness that the doctor had yet to truly regain consciousness. As far as he could see, and remember, John had not received any blows to the head during the brief assault. Sherlock stripped off his gloves and checked John's pulse again. It was still a little on the slow size but it _thumped_ with a solid steadiness and strength beneath his feather touch. A few seconds of careful search found the small light in John's kit and Sherlock gently raised John's eyelids one by and one and shone the light in them.

_Appropriate pupil dilation. Tracks light. No visible head wound. _Sherlock gently ran his hands over John's head, his fingers combing through the strands of wheat-and-gray to verify. _No head wound. State of unconsciousness likely brought on by a combination of shock and poor physical condition._ Sherlock felt something tight ease a little between his shoulder blades.

In the golden glow of the table lamp Sherlock continued his evaluation. _Cheek bruised. Cut. Attacker wore ring. Jaw intact. Bloody hell of a black eye in the morning. _"Jesus, god," Sherlock found himself swearing with uncharacteristic vehemence for the second time that day as he peeled back John's coat to reveal the mark across the pale skin of his throat. Within an hour it would be an angry purple mark: a slash of inky darkness across veins and pipes. For now, though, it was an intricate scarlet pattern against the warmth of John's skin. If Sherlock cocked his head just right it even looked a little like the paisley print of the wallpaper that Mrs. Hudson was so fond of. Sherlock forced himself to swallow past the sudden choking sensation that burned in his throat and leaned forward to study the pattern.

_Men's military boots. Size ten. Deep treads. New. _Sherlock pulled a small magnifying glass from his pocket and leaned forward, studying the imprint of the man's shoe intently. "Ahh," he breathed a moment later. He plucked the small particles of dirt from John's neck with tweezers retrieved from the bathroom and dropped them into a plastic bag he nicked from the kitchen. They would be studied later. _Weight distribution uneven. Inner marks deeper. Possible weak arch. Skeptical. Assault position could negate observation._

The image of the man, his foot pressed down on the expanse of John's exposed neck flashed before Sherlock's eyes. _Why… stop?_ John's words replayed over the image, his strained efforts interwoven with the picture until Sherlock was unable to separate sound from sight. _Let… me… die._

Sherlock threw himself to his feet and stumbled, going down again halfway across the living room. He made it as far as the waste basket tucked underneath the desk before he lost control. He clutched the basket to his chest like it was the last solid thing in the world and retched, repeatedly, into it. Everything he had eaten in the last twenty-four hours… God, everything he had _ever_ eaten came back up and set up residence in bottom of the trash. He retched until his jaw ached and his throat felt like he had seared it with a hot poker. Every time he made the mistake of thinking that his stomach was through with him John's voice danced softly across his vision.

_Please finish_.

With every echo of John's voice the panic hit him, thick and blinding. With every realization that John had wanted to die, that he had tried to commit suicide-by-mugger his stomach heaved with enough force that Sherlock would not have been surprised to look down and see his digestive system dangling out of his mouth in limp, glistening ropes.

By the time Sherlock managed to calm himself and regain control of his body there was nothing coming out of his stomach and there had not been for a while. He held position, draped over the waste basket, for several moments and let saliva pool in his mouth until he had enough to swish and spit. He repeated this procedure several times. It wasn't particularly effective but it did give him time to steady his breathing and let his muscles begin to quiet.

"Get up," he whispered to himself, throwing a look over his shoulder at the couch. John lay where he had left him, still unconscious. Sherlock sighed heavily and braced his shaking hands against the floor. He held that position to the count of ten and then forced himself his feet. Once upright his knees tried to buckle and he caught himself on the desk.

_Get a hold of yourself. You don't have time for this. _On unsteady legs he staggered to the bathroom and leaned on the sink while he rinsed his mouth and splashed cold water on his face. _John_, he reminded himself as he stared at the pale reflection of his face in the mirror. He was pale, even for him: borderline translucent like a white rose beneath the moonlight. _Focus on John._

He rinsed his mouth again and helped himself to some of the mouthwash that was sitting next to the sink.

In the living room he took a few moments to clean up the waste basket and straighten the mess he had made in the efforts to keep himself upright as he had staggered to the bathroom. Once he had managed to regain enough control of his body that he could stop worrying about causing more harm than help to John he sank back to the floor beside the couch and resumed his ministrations.

He was able to remove John's jacket without issue; the jumper and the shirt underneath it, however, were another story. Both would have required near acrobatic feats to pull them off the smaller man's shoulders and over his head and frankly, especially after the amount of time he had spent puking into a trash can, Sherlock didn't have the patience or time for such feats. He cut the clothes off. The shirt, another in an endless line of undershirts, was no loss but Sherlock felt a physical pang like a bolt to the heart as he destroyed the soft oatmeal jumper. It was a great deal more worn than it had been the first time Sherlock had seen it, but he would never forget this jumper.

John had been wearing it when he shot the cabbie.

"Oh, John," the soft exclamation left his lips in a weary sigh. Suddenly, sitting here looking at the physical evidence of John's self neglect, he didn't have the energy to swear anymore. His hypothesis that he would be able to see John's ribs was, sadly, proven correct. They rose from his flesh in a ribbing of pale mountains, the legs of a giant spider reaching around to dig into the doctor's chest with a stark and brutal efficiency that caused Sherlock to amend his record of John's probable weight loss. _Three stones. Plus. Hidden by bulky clothes and bone structure._ More than anything else they spoke of what John had undergone. Sherlock could practically feel them staring at him. They didn't clamor; they didn't speak. It was just a silent, unrelenting judgment:_look at what you have made me become. _

Heart in his throat, Sherlock forced himself to examine the doctor's ribs. The attacker's kick had taken him fairly centered in the torso and just a little to the right. _Seventh rib definitely broken. Likely fractures in the eighth and possibly the ninth. _Sherlock concluded as his fingers explored the explosion of purple and red blossoming across John's chest. It clearly hurt because even bereft of his consciousness John's flesh flinched and pulled away from Sherlock's touch.

"Oh, John," Sherlock repeated after checking to make sure that the ribs and impressive bruising on his torso were the extent of his injuries. "I'm sorry," he whispered, suddenly feeling it with every cell in his body.

There had been many times in the months between his suicide and now when he had felt badly for leaving. He had laid awake every night since he had plummeted to the cement outside of Bart's and asked himself _Could I have done this differently?_ He had replayed every step, every move of the game between him and Moriarty in his head a thousand times. No matter how many times he tried, no matter how many times he replayed the game he couldn't think of another way for it to end.

At least, not another way in which he and John both survived.

Sherlock shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He needed to think.

He gently washed the cut on John's face before dabbing on peroxide. He combed the dirt and gravel from his blogger's hair. He found some ice in the freezer and let it sit on John's ribs while he disposed of the rags and tools he had used. He helped himself to a glass of water and then poured one for John and set it, along with a dose of paracetamol and a sleeping pill at the side table near John's head. He left the scissors there as well and tossed the ruined shirt and jumper in the waste basket, posing it near at hand. It was an outstanding display of will power on his part. A little voice in the back of his head was screaming that he keep it; demanding that he bring some part of this night – of _John_ away with him.

_There you go… AGAIN! Getting SOOOO sentimental about your pet! _Sherlock could practically see Moriarty, smartly dressed in his tailored Westwood with his hands shoved deep into his pockets: the picture of a perfect gentleman if one ignored the murder in his eyes and the fact that he was prone to throwing fits like a small child.

_Obviously not _that_ voice, _his own commented sardonically.

He left the jumper in the waste basket and surveyed the scene. It passed; or rather it would pass for John. He left the medical case open on the floor and traced his steps back to the bathroom to leave the cupboard door open. Best to make it look like John had stumbled home on his own and managed to care for himself a bit.

After removing the ice pack and returning it to the freezer Sherlock found himself once again standing in the living room. John had shifted slightly in his moment of absence. He had twisted his upper torso towards the back of the couch, his head dipping to nestle between the curve of his own shoulder and the cushion of the arm of the couch. There were lines of pain around his lips and eyes but his breathing had deepened a little. Beneath his eyelids his eyes flickered back and forth. Once again Sherlock felt an unbearable tightness ease between his shoulders.

Still, just to be sure, he reached down and for the third time in less than three hours he laid his fingers against the pulse point on John's neck. Just as his breathing had deepened so had his heart rate increased and now it pulsed along at an acceptable resting rate with the same steady, unyielding force that it had exhibited all evening in spite of its owner's desires.

Sherlock shut his eyes and allowed himself just a moment. For a moment, a single blip in the entire vastness of existence, he stood in the living room of 221B Baker Street and felt John's pulse shiver up his fingertips and through his arm until it melded with the steady _thump, thump, thump_ of his own heart.

For just that moment everything was right.


	5. Chapter 5

Sherlock needed more data.

He hated this part. The part where the solution to whatever problem plagued him hovered before his gaze but was still just out of his grasp. Hated it because in that single moment he was, well, he felt guilty of doing exactly what he accused everyone else of doing: of failing to actually _observe. _Hated it because he was trapped constantly reviewing every fact in his mind palace, the information blurring before his eyes at an astonishing rate.

_Boring. Boring. BOR-ING! _

Sherlock reluctantly lifted his fingers from John's pulse and rubbed at his temples. _Agreeing with you twice in one day_, he found himself remarking to the lunatic strolling around inside his skull, _that is never a good sign. _The growing weariness that Sherlock had been fighting all day suddenly pulled at him. Yanked really. Nearly took him off of his own feet and upended him like a piece of rubbish onto the rug. It had been days since he had actually slept – two? Three? Maybe even four? He wasn't quite sure – and the adrenaline rush of the attack in the alley coupled with the god awful length of time he had spent hunched over the waste basket had burned up whatever reserves he had retained.

_I keep telling you Sherlock, but you just don't LISTEN. We are the same, you and I. _Jim's lips twitched as he struck a pose. _You just refuse to admit it._

_Data_, Sherlock reminded himself, forcing the fuzzy, covered-in-cobwebs feeling to the side. _You have to figure this out_. Moriarty snorted decisively. Sherlock ignored him and gently covered John with a woven throw taken from the back of the sofa. _I should go_, the sensible part of Sherlock insisted. _Safer for me, safer for John. I can think just as well back at…_Sherlock trailed off as he did every time he thought of his current living quarters. It wasn't _home_, never would be. It was the place where he collected his thoughts. It was where he kept his meager belongings. It was the place that he slept when he had to. But it wasn't home.

_Stay_, whispered the rebellious, unthinking voice. _Just for a little longer. _

"Just for a few minutes," Sherlock murmured. "I'll just take a look around the flat. More data," he rationalized to himself. It was a pretty good excuse as far as excuses went. He _did_ need more data. He had to solve this problem; had to solve _John_. His stomach threatened to heave at the thought of what might happen to John if he didn't find a solution.

He didn't really need to think about it. He knew all too well what would happen. It was written in the boot tread bruise across John's throat and echoed in the plea forever burned into his brain.

* * *

The flat was cleaner than it had been when he had lived there. Oh, it was still dusty and the rug could do with a good cleaning but overall it was more ordered. The books were neatly stacked, the papers and bills sorted and organized on the desk. John's laptop was closed and covered with a thin layer of dust. Sherlock felt his eyebrow rise in surprise. He knew the doctor had not kept up with his blog, knew that John had not posted anything to his online journal since the entry he had made following Sherlock's death in which he had staunchly defended his fallen friend's innocence. The fact that he knew this because he checked every day just on the off chance that John might post, that he might hear his friend's voice through the strength of his words… well, that was something that Sherlock would ig…

_No._ The voice whispered. _All the data. All of it. I have to _see!

So. Back to the collection of data. Sherlock swept his eyes over the desk. _Dust on the laptop. Thin covering. Allowing for time of year, cleanliness of the flat, and likelihood of John opening the window- four days since he opened his computer. _Sherlock circled the room like a hawk, his eyes darting back and forth in the soft light of the lamp.

_Wear patterns in the rug, paper folded over the arm of the chair, increased indentation. _"You've been sitting in my chair," the conclusion was so startling that he voiced it out loud, head swiveling owlishly back to where John slumbered on the sofa. John's chair sat where it always had, the throw pillow carefully plumped and arranged. It was not a chair that someone sat in. Not for some time.

His skull was sitting on the mantle; his violin case propped against the hearth. Both items were utterly free of dust. Sherlock stretched forth his hand but stopped at the last moment from touching either object. It seemed an intrusion, somehow, to seek to touch these things that had once been his.

The fireplace was cold but clean. It had not been lit in a long time. The image of John sitting alone in the cold, dark of the flat twisted something in chest.

Sherlock forced himself from the living room and into the kitchen. It was clean: neat and orderly. The only thing remotely out of place was the used tea cup sitting in the sink. The cupboards were all but empty. There was a moderate supply of tea, two cans of beans, and a mostly empty tin of biscuits. _Stale,_ Sherlock surmised and barely resisted the urge to chuck it violently back into the cupboard. The fridge was also all but empty. There was a scarce quarter of a carton of milk, a few eggs, a sliver of a cheese, enough bread for a couple slices of toast, and a half empty jar of marmalade. Two apples sat on the table. Outside of that there was nothing in the kitchen. Nothing.

He inhaled so sharply that his breath hissed like some angry dragon through his nostrils. "God damn it, John." He left the kitchen as quickly as he had entered, unable to handle the sight of it stripped bare of the clutter that had marked their life together. So sterile, so _empty_. Like the rise of John's ribs it was a silent, condemning judgment.

_I was so alone…_

Sherlock went up the stairs to John's room, careful to bypass the step that always creaked. John's room was just as sterile as the kitchen had been. Everything was neat and ordered. The bed was made with a strict, crisp military precision. For those who know what to look for John's entire military existence was written in the line of those sheets and the stretch of that blanket. The rest of the room was bare. There were no knickknacks, no pictures or personal belongings. John had not had much when he had moved into 221B but at the time of Sherlock's suicide he had owned more than this.

He froze, a dresser drawer halfway open and looked back around the room. The chest of drawers was relatively dust free, the handles clean and polished from repetitive and consistent use. The rest of the room was not. _Dust_, Sherlock thought. _The dresser is the only thing clear of dust_. Just to be sure Sherlock went back to the bed and ran a finger along the fold of the blanket. _Dust. Stiff. Unused. He is not sleeping in his bed – the sofa, possibly?_

He straightened and went back to the dresser, pulling the drawer the rest of the way out. John's clothes stared back at him. Like everything else he had thus seen in the flat they were folded and organized with a disgusting neatness. They were worn, but clean and Sherlock recognized every article of clothing. John had bought nothing for himself, nothing new since Sherlock's demise.

_Your clothes: recently laundered but everything you're wearing's at least ... three years old? Keeping up appearances but not planning ahead. And here you are on a kamikaze murder spree. What's _that _about? _Sherlock's memory rattled off at him, the smug self-satisfied voice of his genius making his mouth go dry. _Ahh. Three years ago – is that when they told you? That you're a dead man walking._

Sherlock blinked and found that he was clutching one of John's shirts in his hands so tightly that he was cutting off his own circulation. He brought the soft scrap of fabric to his face and let it brush his nose. Even under the detergent it still smelled like John. Sherlock ground his teeth together and forced his arm down, placing the shirt neatly back in the drawer.

It was harder than it should have been.

The bathroom was as clean as the rest of the flat save for the bit of mess that Sherlock had intentionally made. There were both pain and sleeping medications in the cabinet but the bottles were still more than half full and the dates on the prescription were from soon after the Fall. There was only one towel hanging on the rod by the shower but in the shower were two kinds of soap. The kind that John preferred… _half full…_ and a bottle of Sherlock's shampoo. Sherlock stared. It was nearly full, the bottle relatively new and of a different packaging than the company had been using when Sherlock had last lived here.

The detective's eyes narrowed and lifted the washcloth from inside the shower. It smelled of John's soap and only John's soap. Sherlock put the washcloth back and left the bathroom.

He had left his own bedroom for last. He opened the door expecting to see one of two things. It would either be exactly as he left it: a flurry of papers and precariously stacked books interspersed with half formed experiments and various things of importance all coated in a thick layer of dust, or it would be as organized and empty as the rest of the flat.

It was neither of those things.

It _had_ been straightened. The experiments had been cleared out; good thing too. Many of those had possessed components that were disposable and would no doubt have created quite a mess. The chaos of papers and books had been corralled but it was instantly obvious to Sherlock that care had been taken to keep the stacks and collections as he had organized them. The entire room was clean, tidy, and full of that _lived in_ feeling. The only parts of the room showing some neglect were the pulls on his dresser and the door on his wardrobe. Sherlock paused to give them a second glance. Neglected yes, but not nearly so much as most of John's room had been. Both things had been opened – more than a week ago but less than a month.

Most telling, however, was the bed. It was made with the same exactly precision that marked John's handiwork. _Multiple crease lines. Soft around the edges. Slight dip on the left side of the bed. Pillow has been used. Right side of bed untouched. Book on left side of bed. _

Sherlock stood, stunned, in the center of the room. Slowly he raised his hands, noted that they were shaking, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "So," he said softly. "You're not eating. You do nothing but go to work or sit at home. Once a week you both meet Sarah for lunch and visit my grave. You don't sleep in your bed but you still store your clothes in your room and go up the stairs at least twice a day to change despite the fact that your limp has returned. You don't blog or keep in contact with the outside world. You have no visitors. Not even Mrs. Hudson comes up here much anymore – if she did the fridge would be stocked better regardless of whether or not you ate.

"You're the only one using the shower but you still keep my soap. You don't use my soap but you must do _something_ with it because the bottle in the shower is not the bottle that I left behind. You take care of my things. You give them more attention than you give your own. You sleep in my bed," Sherlock's voice broke and he stood in silence for a time, unable to look away from the bed. "but only on one side," he finished, finally managing to tear himself away and resume his pacing. "You get attacked but you don't find back. You get saved and you ask for death. Your physical condition is of a man dying. You're," Sherlock forced himself to take a breath, "keeping up appearances but not planning ahead."

Something dark passed over Sherlock's face and he acted on the thought instantly before he lost his nerve. Three quick steps and he was at the nightstand. He opened the small drawer, that useless little thing meant to keep note pads and random pieces of junk that no one knew what to do with but inevitably kept. "You don't just want to die," he whispered, staring down at the gun in the drawer. "You're planning on it."

He checked. He had to. The safety was on but the gun was loaded. All it would take was a quick release of the safety and tightening of his finger and then bye-bye-birdie.

Sherlock's legs gave out and he landed on the bed with a graceless _thump_.

"John. John. Why?" his tone was frantic, the words practically slurred with the rush of emotion.

_Are you reeeallllly THIS dense? Honestly. How is that YOU are ALIVE? _Moriarty queried. _I figured it out during our lovely little pool party and you… you DIDN'T SEE. You STILL can't SEE. _Moriarty, Consulting Criminal collapsed into a fit of hysterical giggling. _I TOLD you that I would burn your HEART. God help me, but I didn't THINK that yoooooouuuu would light it on fire FOR me. This is just PRECIOUS.  
_

Sherlock propped his elbows up on his knees so that he could steeple his fingers in front of his nose. After a moment he took one hand down and shut the drawer of the nightstand. Being able to see John's probable source of execution was not helping his process.

"Why would you do this to yourself? You have so much going for you. You said it yourself – I pulled you out of your depression and let you find your life again. Why aren't you living it? I'm not here anymore dragging you off at god-awful hours of the night to chase murderers. I'm not harassing your dates and calling them names. I was bad for you John. I'm selfish. I wanted your time, all of it. I wanted you to constantly be behind me telling me that I was brilliant. I was ruining your life, your relationships, your job… why can you not let me go?"

The frantic word flow was as an over arching commentary as his mind reviewed every moment he had spent with John, frantically scrambling to find something.

…_It was extraordinary; it was quite extraordinary... _

No one had ever called him extraordinary before. No one had ever appreciated what he did, save for Lestrade, and Sherlock suspected it was because when he rattled things off for the Detective Inspector it meant that crimes got solved and people went to jail.

_ … It's how you get your kicks, isn't it? You risk your life to prove you're clever… You're an idiot…_

Idiot. It was only a matter of time until John started poking at him. Sherlock remembered bracing for the twinge of pain and not finding it. _Idiot_, John had called him – a singularly disappointing and all together inaccurate word choice. It had taken Sherlock a moment to realize that his new flatmate said _Idiot_ in the same tone that he said _Extraordinary_.

_ …Let him go, or I __will__ kill you…_

And he would have, too. John had killed for him once. It had been unexpected and… amazing. Sherlock had no doubt that John would have done it again. It was why he had to go alone to the roof of Bart's. By that point John would have shot Moriarty on sight no matter what it meant for his own well being because a Moriarty left alive was a threat to Sherlock.

…_Hang on – you were saying "Sorry" a minute ago. Don't spoil it. Go on: what have I done that's so bloody stimulating?..._

He was the only person Sherlock had ever apologized to and actually meant it. Ever.

…_You ... you told me once that you weren't a hero. Umm ... there were times I didn't even think you were __human__, but let me tell you this: you were the best man, and the most human ... human being that I've ever known and no-one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, and so ... _

Faithful John, so faithful. The one part of his plan that had failed and Sherlock could not deny that the fact that John had not believed was his light in the darkness. It was the lifeline that he held on to, the rope with which he tethered himself to reality when he was forced to spend a despairingly large amount of time rummaging through the filth of humanity; when the Game was no longer a game but an endless hell crafted by Sherlock's other half. On the really, truly bad days when Moriarty's web and the darkness of his own existence pulled tight around him it was John's belief that kept him from shooting his veins so full of cocaine that he wound up as dead as everyone believed.

…_I was __so__ alone, and I owe you so much…_

Of all John's words this phrase haunted him the most. It dogged his every waking step and echoed in an endless whisper whenever he managed to drift off to sleep. It haunted him because it was something he had never gotten to say to John's face. Instead he had jumped off a building.

… _One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't ... be ... dead. Would you do ...? Just for me, just stop it. Stop this…_

Sherlock's arms slipped from his knees and his head jerked upright. "Oh," he whispered, his eyes growing round. He turned to stare at the open bedroom door. "Oh," he repeated.

It was a preposterous thought: improbable, unlikely, and ludicrous. But it was the only conclusion that made sense. The only one that fit the facts.

_When you eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._

Sherlock needed John. Needed him like a fish needed water, like a plant required the light of the sun. He had jumped because a world without John in it was an unacceptable world. He would have done it for real if he'd had to. He would have taken that gun from Moriarty and blown his precious brains out the back of his head without second thought if it was the only way to save John. John… illuminated him. He had spoken it out loud once, directly to John's face. He wondered if the other man had realized the bond that the simple words had vocalized: _I'd be lost without my blogger_.

It had never occurred to him that John might feel the same way. That he would be lost, well and truly lost, without his consulting detective. For the second time that day Sherlock envisioned their roles reversed. What would he do in a world without John?

His stomach tried to heave.

He knew the answer to that question. He would do nothing, be nothing. He would be worse than dead. Such a future was why death had been a preferable option.

Sherlock swallowed. "You need me," he whispered, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. There was a thread of that _something_ there as well. "You need _me_," he repeated, still unbelieving. John needed him: broken, ruined, sociopathic _him_. He was the piece missing from the equation of John's life.

_And BINGO was his NAME-O! _applauded Moriarty with a sneer. _Took you long enough._

With a deep, practiced breath Sherlock pushed Moriarty's voice away. After sitting in stunned silence for longer than he cared to admit the consulting detective rose shakily to his feet and left the room, careful to shut the door quietly behind him. A quick retracing of his steps around the flat verified that everything was as it should be. He took his coat from the kitchen chair and slid it over his arms. The gloves he collected from beside the sofa and pulled back onto his fingers. His preparations were made in a flurry of quick, quiet movements while a spark of resolve took flame inside the numbness of his chest and flared into a steady burn.

"Hold on John," he whispered, setting his hand gently on the other man's head. "I will figure something out. Just hold on a little longer. I will solve this. I will." He smoothed John's hair down one more time before forcing his hand to leave the strands of wheat and gray.

It was harder than it should have been.

Then with a twirl of his coat and click of the door Sherlock Holmes was headed down the stairs and out into the night. For the first time in a long time he strode purposefully down the street, moving with quickness and precision that was almost violent.

It was time to play the Game.


	6. Chapter 6

**Day 329**

_Please, will you do this for me?_

_Do what? _Confused. Agitated. So close. Sherlock is so close. Sherlock needs help. Why won't he let John help?

_This phone call – it's, er ... it's my note. It's what people do, don't they – leave a note?_

_Leave a note when? _Note? Why would Sherlock need to leave a … No. No. No. No.

_Goodbye John._

"Sherlock."

John Watson came awake in an instant. In that split fraction of a second between states he threw his body upright, fingers clawing at his covering in a desperate attempt to escape the end of the dream and get to the man who was just out of his reach. Half a second later he clapped his hand over the stabbing pain in his chest, which served only to make it hurt more. While swearing with both fluency and vehemence that did his time as a soldier proud he gingerly lowered his body back into a semi-reclining position.

With care and a great deal of suspicion he pulled his hand back and stared at the impressive rainbow of blues, blacks, and purples that highlighted a significant portion of his chest. Gentle prodding verified what a quick glance had told him. Broken ribs. Lovely. He inhaled deeply and coughed, his first order of business to make sure that his lung hadn't collapsed. "Sodding, fucking, hell!" he swore, raising his fingers to touch gingerly at his throat. Breathing that deep had burned, not his lungs, but his throat.

The swearing did not help. In fact, it seemed to make it worse. Story of his bloody life this morning it seemed. The words came out hoarse and rough with scarce enough force to make it audible across the room. It felt like he'd been screaming though, screaming for hours. Each whisper of air, each twitch of movement made his throat cry and flinch away from this new, oncoming attack.

Had he been screaming in his sleep again?

He had screamed a lot, in the beginning. Screamed enough that more than once had been woken by Mrs. Hudson in her robe and nightcap, shaking him desperately. Once he had dreamed of the war: of explosions and gunfire, of watching your comrades die at your side and knowing that it was nothing more than random chance that you were still alive. Once he had dreamed of triage, of being forced to play god over dying men. Who could he save and who must die? Once the terrors of the battlefield had caused him to toss and turn, to wake in a cold sweat with a racing heart. Now, though, now he only dreamt one dream and it always ended with blood on the pavement and the rumble of baritone voice. _Goodbye, John_.

John touched his throat gingerly. _No_, he decided. _No screaming_. Now that he was giving the pain more attention he could recognize that while similar it wasn't the pain of prolonged vocal cord abuse. This was something different. Not to mention that the exterior was nearly as sore as the inside and felt a little inflamed.

With a little more care than the first time, John sat up and exhaled slowly. An innocent move to rub the last dregs of a miserable sleep from his eyes resulted in a jolt of pain across one side of his face. "Fuck," he swore softly, wincing as he pressed at his face. "What…?" He blinked rapidly and looked around the flat.

There was a mess at the side of the couch: a glass of water and some pills sat on the table near where his head had been, as if he'd made the effort to get the medication but had fallen asleep before he could actually take it. His medical kit lay open on the floor and a flurry of fabric scraps looked like they were trying to crawl out of the waste basket. John winced as he recognized the mutilated remains of the jumper he had been wearing. "Couldn't be helped, I suppose," he remarked conversationally as he spared his sore ribs another glance. "But...?" His voice turned quizzical once more as his gaze continued downwards to his feet. He was still wearing his shoes.

The residual alertness from the adrenaline infused dream was rapidly fading. John could feel his mental capacities trying to figure things out with about as much success as a leaky row bow trying to cross the Atlantic. He went to rub his face again and remembered to stop before aggravating whatever injury he had there. "Bloody hell," he whispered. "I need tea."

It took effort to get to his feet. It had been taking more and more effort in recent weeks. The weakness that was settling into his bones was only made worse by the stabbing pain in his chest. _You're weak_, the dark little voice in his head taunted. _Just do it already. _John stared at the door to Sherlock's bedroom and through it to the little table beside the bed and the loaded gun sitting in the drawer.

It was a long look, a pregnant pause in which his heart presented all of the reasons he should just forget the tea, walk in there, and finally put the gun to his head. It was a daily conversation, a morning ritual. Usually it happened in the bedroom before he even got out of bed, the heavy weight of the loaded gun reassuring in his grip. His mind argued back rationally, in something that sounded suspiciously like Sherlock's voice, about what a senseless, pointless action that would be. How could he do something like that to his friends and family?

_What friends? What family? _The nasty little voice responded.

John found himself agreeing more and more with the dark little voice but he didn't go to the bedroom. Not today. He sighed and looked around for his cane and then cursed again when he couldn't find it.

Another glance to the bedroom door, but his feet made their way into the kitchen and John refilled the tea pot and turned it on. He pulled the tea and a cup from the cupboard, laying them on the worktop, before he turned and shuffled awkwardly over to the fridge.

"Oh." John froze with his hand on the nearly empty milk carton. There wasn't any more milk in the fridge. "Oh," he repeated more softly, letting the door of the refrigerator swing shut. He left the milk on the counter with the rest of the tea making supplies and limped out of the kitchen in a daze.

_The man's cry for help was low enough and hoarse enough that John almost missed it. It fluttered at the corner of his senses and he almost dismissed it until the actual syllables sank into his brain. "Help…" John found himself turning towards the noise, his mind already turning. _Mugging? They didn't happen very often in this part of London but it wasn't unheard of. A man that size? _He amended his thoughts quickly as the man reached out a hand imploringly. _Drunk. Or high.

_John missed the first indicators of the man's attack. He could have sworn that someone called his name, but the half of a glance he was able to make over his shoulder showed him nothing and further searching was cut short by the man's fist to his face. Weakened by months of scarcely enough food to keep his body functioning he went down instantly, hitting the ground with depressingly little sound. While the front of his mind was still scrambling to comprehend what was happening the back of his brain morphed into Soldier Mode at the first touch of violence. Muscle memory had him tucking in to absorb the contact of his body against the ground and rolling in the same motion so that the man's initial follow-up attack missed him._

_ Then the front of his brain finally caught up with the back of the brain. John found himself staring up at his attacker in the dim light from the nearby street. There was a darkness in his gaze, a visage most familiar. John looked up and saw his death written in the man's eyes and could not find a single reason why he should actually bother to stop him._

_ So he didn't._

The bathroom was a bit of a mess too, the cabinet left open and the top to the bottle of Tylenol was only half on. John stopped paying attention to things once he saw his reflection in the mirror. "Damn," he whispered, gingerly leaning forward to get a better look at his face. The right side looked pretty normal. Tired. Worn. Sad. The left side, however, was a great bloody mess. John cautiously inspected his teeth with his tongue while his fingers did the same thing to the outside of his face. Bruises aside – and it was really an impressive bloom of colors – the cut stung like hell. It wasn't particularly deep but it followed the line of his cheekbone from the corner of his eye all the way down to his nose. With his luck it would scar. Given the overall swelling on that side of the face he was surprised to find that none of his teeth were loose.

The mark on his neck was even more spectacular. If he looked closely he could see the curved outline of a shoe, but a quick glance just made it look like an angry purple slash across his skin: like someone had slit his throat and he'd just bled in shades of purple. He didn't need to touch it to assess the damage – he could feel it well enough – but he did anyway, wincing beneath the brush of his fingertips.

"Why did you stop?" he croaked out loud. "You were so close… _why did you stop_?" His bruised and battered reflection stared back at him but it didn't give him any answers.

"Dr. Sawyer speaking."

"Um, hey. It's John," despite efforts to the contrary and the administration of two soothing cups of tea John felt that he still sounded very much like a man who had almost been strangled. He fought the urge to clear his throat, because god only knows that would just make it worse, and instead took another small sip of tea.

"John. Hello. What can I do for you?" He could practically hear her coming to attention on the other end of the call. Her voice had brightened a bit at the use of his name but even he could tell that she was confused. He never called her, not anymore.

"I know I'm supposed to take a shift today but I've come down with something," he managed to croak out. "Be bad form if I passed it off to the patients." He cleared his throat and immediately winced, cursing silently. "I'm sure I'll feel better in a day or two but…"

"No, no. Don't worry about it." The doctor's tone was back in her voice. "Take all the time you need. There will still be sick people when you feel better."

"Thanks, Sarah," John breathed a small sigh of relief. "I'll make up for it."

He could practically see her making some sort of shooing motion with her hand as she sat in her office. "Like I said, don't worry about it. Take care of yourself John," she added gently.

John ignored that. He wasn't up to lying to her any more today. "I'll see you around," he said instead and then ended the call before Sarah took the chance and said anything else. He laid the mobile on the kitchen table and picked up the half-empty cup of tea, sipping at it slowly. The call to Sarah had been an easy one to make, even if he had spent the better part of an hour preparing for it. He was a terrible liar, always had been.

He had gotten better since Sherlock had died.

Alone in their flat he allowed the tremor to move through his body at even the mere thought of his name. He allowed his body that moment of grief: the moment where his heart stopped and his chest and throat felt like they were on fire because he suddenly wasn't capable of breathing. In the beginning he had been numb and then angry. He had foolishly assumed that he was moving through the stages of grief, but then the full weight of his feelings had struck him.

Three days after Sherlock's funeral he had moved back into 221B because he couldn't sleep. He didn't sleep, wasn't able to, until he had wrapped himself in Sherlock's coat and curled up in the other man's chair. He didn't leave the flat for nearly a week. He couldn't. By the end of the first month he could feel people watching him with something other than sympathy or pity.

He had tried to pull himself together. He really had, but it just hadn't worked.

Every day he woke up with the small hope that today would be the day that things started to get better but that day never came. The moment he opened his eyes the full crushing weight of his grief hit him again, hit him with enough force that he couldn't breathe. Nights weren't any better. He was living off of minutes of sleep caught between nightmares. Many nights he didn't bother trying to sleep at all but rather laid awake and stared at the ceiling.

It had been four months before he ceased starting each morning with a heaving stomach and a prayer for relief uttered over the loo; four months before he stopped puking up everything he ate as soon as it crossed his tongue. He lied and told people that he was getting better but the truth was that he had just stopped eating.

John finished his tea and stared at his mobile. He was stalling. He knew he was. The call to Sarah, though somewhat unpleasant, had been necessary. He knew he looked exactly like what he was – a man who had nearly gotten killed. He couldn't very well go into work like this. The facts that he felt like shit and would likely scare his patients were minor details. He just didn't want to face the questions.

_"John! What happened?" _or even worse "_How are you doing?"_ Christ, he was so tired of hearing those sentences.

The call to work and subsequent ruse had been necessary.

This, well, this was not.

John found himself staring through walls and doors to where his gun lay. For the second time in less than an hour he found himself his mind deliberating without any conscious effort on his part. He didn't bother seeing the deliberations through to the end. Instead he picked up his mobile and hesitantly scrolled through his contacts until he reached the appropriate one.

As his inner voices wrapped up their argument, the logical one having once again persuaded the dark one to wait, John hit send and held the phone to his ear.

Two rings and then, "Lestrade."

"Hello Greg. This is John… Watson," he added his last name after a moment of hesitation. Once the doctor's number had been programmed into the detective inspector's phone, and memorized by the other man to boot, but it had been several months since he had talked to Lestrade on a regular basis. Hell, after Sherlock's death he hadn't bothered much with talking to anyone. Even his friends had gotten sick of him after a while.

"John!" Lestrade's surprise was clearly audible but so was his pleasure. "How are you doing these days?"

"Oh, I'm fin…" John bit off the habitual response and leaned forward to cradle the uninjured side of his face in his free hand. "No. Well. In all honesty I'm not doing so great," he let out his breath shakily. _Come on, John, now's not the time to be a coward._

"John?" Lestrade's voice was lower now, concerned. "John? Are you okay?"

"No." John closed his eyes and forced himself to speak around the hard lump that had formed in his throat. "Someone tried to kill me last night."


	7. Chapter 7

John stood in front of New Scotland Yard gathering the courage to go inside. Lestrade had offered to come by Baker Street or send a car round for him after John refused the first offer before it was even all the way out of the Detective's mouth. John knew that it made more sense for the police to come to him; he was the one who had been attacked but he couldn't bring himself to let other people into their home. It was silly perhaps, and more than a little sad, but letting other people into the flat seemed to make Sherlock's absence all the more real. As long as it was just John sitting in the flat then he could hold on to those last threads of Sherlock.

It was only as he was getting dressed that he realized that limping down to Scotland Yard as fast he could hobble may not have been the best of plans. As he had already established in front of the bathroom mirror he looked exactly like a man who had escaped death by a narrow margin. Thank god it was springtime. A careful selection of wardrobe, including a light scarf nicked from Sherlock's wardrobe, covered his injured ribs and most of the bruising at his neck. He couldn't do anything about the mark on his face though and it certainly sparked a frank stare from his cabbie.

"Bit of a rough night?"He asked as John slid into the backseat.

John forced a smile. "You could say that," he responded, careful to keep his tone and volume moderated. It was the best he could do to mask the unmistakable hoarseness that issued from his throat otherwise. He gave the address for the Yard and then sat back, staring pointedly out of the window and ignoring the curious glances that the cabbie threw his way.

Now that he was here he was having a hard time forcing himself to walk through the doors even though every second he spent standing outside earned him another shocked look. The last time he had actually stepped foot in Scotland Yard had been in the days immediately following Sherlock's death.

"C'mon, John," he whispered to himself as he stared to the great expanse of shined glass. "You're the one that made the phone call and got yourself into this mess. Now you've got to live with the consequences." His hand flexed, unconsciously seeking the comfort of his cane. It was gone, or at least lying in an alleyway somewhere. It would have to be replaced. "Bloody hell." John squared his shoulders and went inside.

"John!" Lestrade's voice, raised in greeting, echoed down the hall and brought the doctor's slow progress to a halt. Despite himself John felt a small thrill of delight at the other man's voice. They had not spoken in months and all of their communications since Sherlock's death had been strained, to say the least, but Gregory Lestrade was still the closest thing that John had to a friend. "John!"

Slowly, the movement made all the more difficult by the lack of cane and the broken ribs, John turned to face Lestrade, unable to keep a smile from ghosting at the corner of his lips. "Greg," John replied softly.

"You look like hell," Lestrade told him frankly, offering his hand. John studied the other man for a moment, allowing his gaze to flicker between both the Detective Inspector's face and his hand. It was a long enough pause that the scene became awkward, the twitter and rumble of office life around them fading into silence as the rest of this corner of Scotland Yard became aware of something happening in its midst.

Lestrade didn't move but waited patiently, hand outstretched. The Detective Inspector looked tired. He had lost some weight since John had last seen him: his cheekbones stuck out just a little too much and his waist was a little more defined. There were shadows under his eyes that spoke to long hours at the office and sharp lines around his mouth and eyes that hadn't been there before. The thick salt and pepper hair that had caused more than a fair share of hearts to flutter had changed, the balance shifting more in the favor of salt. Invisible, but not unnoticed, was something else. The life that stared out of the gold flecked brown gaze was a little more dull, as if an essential candle had been snuffed out somewhere inside.

John reached out and took the Detective Inspector's hand in his own and shook it with the familiarity of an old friend.

"Definitely not one of my finer moments," he croaked out. "Hello, Greg."

Lestrade's eyes narrowed as soon as John started talking. "Someone tried to kill you, eh?" John let go of the inspector's hand and reached up to part the scarf and flash the bruising on his neck. Lestrade blanched and his eyes hardened all in a moment. "We'll continue this in my office. Higgins," he snared the attention of an officer who had been a little too slow in returning to his work. "Bring me Sergeant Donovan. I'm sure she's helping Anderson down in Forensics. Don't make that face, John," Lestrade added wearily as he directed the doctor to an interior office. "She _is_ a good officer." John didn't deign to offer a response, but he felt that thrill of pleasure as he noted the sudden press of Lestrade's lips and tightening of muscles in his neck and jaw.

"New office?" he inquired instead as Lestrade held open a door and motioned him inside.

"Yeah. Got moved after Sherlock's death last year," the inspector replied, shooting him a quick glance to see how he would handle mention of Sherlock's suicide. It took all of his will power but John kept his face smooth. He had learned to lie with more than his words in recent months. After a moment's observation in which the inspector concluded that he wasn't likely to provoke a panic attack or round of hysterics by mentioning the fallen detective Lestrade continued, "It was my punishment for the whole Sherlock business."

"But I thought you…?"

Lestrade looked up, sighing as he seated himself behind his desk. "Cleared him of guilt in the case of Moriarty's death? Yes. It was quite obvious to all who saw and processed both scene and evidence that he had offed himself. Not to mention that we were able to make enough connections between Moriarty and Brook to all but prove that they were the same person. Still, someone had to take the fall for extensively involving a civilian in police matters." Greg shrugged. "I was the one that called him in the most so I was the lucky scapegoat. Worth it though," he added softly.

John met his gaze and felt a moment of understanding flash between them. Survivor's guilt; and god knew they both guilty of not doing enough. "Always was," he agreed just as quietly.

"We will just wait for Sally, alright? Make it more official," Lestrade explained after a moment of silence. "After that business with Sherlock, well… it will be better to have a witness to this. Besides, I would hate to make you talk about it twice." He motioned to John's throat and took a sip from the cup of coffee that had been cooling on his desk. "That has got to hurt." John nodded and inclined his head.

"A bit," he whispered. "Not as bad as the ribs though."

The inspector straightened behind his desk, the coffee cup returning to the safety of the far corner as Lestrade leaned forward, "Ribs?"

John gave him what amounted to a smile for him nowadays. "I thought you only wanted to do this once, remember?"

"Right. Sorry. Why can't Sally hurry?" the inspector tossed an impatient look at the door.

"Because she's too busy trying to shag Anderson into leaving his wife," it slipped out before John could stop it. He pressed his lips together and looked away.

"Probably true," Lestrade murmured his lips quirking. "You want some water?"

John licked his lips reflexively; the mention of water making him achingly aware of how his throat felt like it had been replaced with sandpaper. He was used to being thirsty. Hold over from Afghanistan. Some days he would go the whole day without drinking, suppressing the roughness in his throat and the cotton in his mouth until someone mentioned it or he saw something that freed the repression of bodily weakness. "That'd be good." Lestrade opened a drawer in his desk and rummaged around for a bit before emerging with a slightly dented bottle of water.

"Sorry it's not cold," apologized the inspector. John made a dismissive gesture with his hand and sipped at the water. They waited.

"You needed me, sir?" The sound of Sally's voice drifting over his head a few minutes later nearly made him choke on the water. Just a few words from her and his entire body tightened, muscles suddenly quivering with the need for action. Four words from this woman and he was more battle ready than he had been since he had gone running after Sherlock's body as it tumbled from the roof of Barts. John pressed his teeth together until his jaw hurt.

"Yes. Come in and shut the door. I thought it might be best to have you present while John gave me his report." Lestrade's voice was bland.

"John? John who?" the door clicked as it shut and Sally Donovan turned around. "Oh. You. What are you doing here?" A look of childlike glee flashed across her face. "Are we finally going to question him concerning…"

"No." Lestrade cut her off before she finished her sentence, recognizing the subtle danger signs in the doctor sitting across from him. "You know as well as I do that it was all circumstantial and that the Yard would rather just put that whole business behind them." The detective inspector looked like he needed a drink. John sympathized. "No, John is here to give his statement regarding the attempt made on his life last night."

"You?" Sally turned her sneer to John. "Why would somebody want to off you? Especially now that the Freak is gone." John felt his face go completely blank.

"Sally," warned Lestrade, his voice weary.

Keeping his eyes on Sally's sneer John reached up and pulled off the scarf, rolling it into a ball in his lap. Though still partially hidden by the collar of his shirt the ever deepening rainbow of colors across his neck were suddenly remarkably visible. "Hello to you too, _Sally_," John hissed, the harshness of his voice even more pronounced by the emotions this woman riled up in him. "Pleasant as ever, I see. Some things never change I guess."

Lestrade groaned. "John…" He rubbed his hands over his eyes for just a moment. "Let's get on with this shall we? You," he added, turning and pointed at Donavan, "are here to listen and take notes. If you're going to be aggravating please don't talk." Lestrade opened another of his desk drawers and pulled out a tape recorder. He set it carefully on the desk, equidistance between John and himself and pressed the red _record_ button with one finger. "Whenever you are ready, John, just start at the beginning. What were you doing when you were attacked?"

John shut his eyes and took another sip of water. "Getting milk," he answered slowly. "I was on my way home after a bit of shopping. Someone called for help and I stopped. They were hidden in the alleyway…"

"You just went stumbling into the dark after some stranger?" Sergeant Donavan asked, clearly skeptical.

John resisted the urge to throw the half empty water battle at her head. "I'm a doctor," he replied quietly, surprised at the calm, sure judgment he could hear there. He idly wondered if anyone else heard it too. Sherlock would be so proud of him for being judgmental. The detective had always maintained that John was too nice. _If you could see what I see… people aren't good, John. Stop wasting your time on them._ "I help people. It is what I do and the man…" John would have shrugged if it doing so didn't hurt so damned badly. "He sounded hurt. I didn't know if he'd been mugged and injured, or if he was drunk or high. He just sounded like he was in a bad way and he was asking for help. So yes, I stumbled into the darkness after him." He opened his eyes and allowed himself the luxury of shooting a quick, smoldering glare at Sally before he adjusted his gaze and focused on Lestrade. "I didn't see the beginning of his attack. If I had seen it I might have avoided it or at least been able to fight back some. The man was quick and brutal." John touched his face lightly.

"You are an experienced soldier and you were already looking at the man. How did he catch you off guard?" John took another sip of water and regarded the inspector's question with a focus he had not allowed before.

"I was… distracted," he said, slowly.

"By what?"

John shut his eyes again. "I thought I heard someone calling my name." _Not just anyone,_ he added mentally_, Sherlock. You thought you heard Sherlock calling your name. You would know that jaguar-in-a-cello rumble anywhere and you're a pathetic sod so you had to look._ "But it was nothing," he added quickly, heading off Lestrade's next question. Wouldn't do for everyone to think that he was stark raving mad. That _is_ what they call it when you see and hear things that aren't really there, right? Mad? _Hard for something to be there when that something doesn't even exist anymore_. "There wasn't anyone there."

"Anyway, he hit me fast. My face," he touched it again, just to highlight the damage, "and then a knee to the gut. I went down and tried to get away. He was quicker. I got a boot to the chest," He gingerly touched the shirt covering his broken ribs. "Broke a couple of my ribs. Then he stood on my neck. I passed out." John looked away, wondering how much of what he was leaving out Lestrade could read in his eyes. "When I woke up I was home. Don't know how I got there, but I'd gotten my kit out and tended to myself a bit before passing out on the sofa."

"Can you describe the man that attacked you?" asked Lestrade.

"Tall. Big guy. Bald. Tattoo on his neck…" John trailed off and then added quietly. "I can sit with a sketch artist if you'd like. I'll never forget his face – you don't forget someone who means to kill you."

"That would be good," Lestrade started to say but Sally interrupted.

"How'd you know he was trying to kill you? You are still alive aren't you? Couldn't you just be overreacting to being mugged?"

"You ever had someone try to kill you, Sally?" John asked conversationally, his face and eyes as blank and unfeeling as he could make them. "I mean really, _truly_ try to kill you. There is a look in their eyes…"

"A look in their eyes?" Sally scoffed. "God, you are almost as bad as the Freak. Thought you'd have gotten him out of your system by now."

"Donovan!" Lestrade snapped, bolting upright. "You will watch your mouth!"

"It wasn't a mugging," John continued in that same unfeeling voice, talking right over Lestrade's protests. "Or if it was it was a poorly executed one. The bloke didn't even touch my wallet. Keys and mobile were still in my pocket. The only things I'm missing are a carton of milk and my cane and I bloody well probably left those all on my own."

Off to the side Lestrade perked up, the narrowing of his eyes and tightening of his face reminding John very much of the hunting dogs his grandfather had kept. They would get that look when they caught the scent of something interesting. It was a look of all consuming focus: a fleeting obsession being formed with the faint turning of cogs and wheels in the mind behind the eyes.

"Milk and a cane, you say? Where, exactly, were you attacked?" John gave him the address. "Bloody hell," Lestrade whispered. Even Sally looked stunned.

"What?" John asked, his own eyes narrowing.

"You didn't fight back? You didn't get any blows of your own in?" Lestrade asked. John's eyes narrowed even further. The detective inspector was using his _clarify this for me_ voice.

"None whatsoever," John confirmed. "Not one of my finer moments. Why?"

Lestrade leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Just before you called me I was over at UCH with Donovan and Anderson seeing a bloke that was brought in. Shop girl found in the alleyway behind the shop when she took out the rubbish this morning. Man was the victim of quite a beating. We assumed he was mugged because he didn't have a wallet on him. He still hasn't regained consciousness. Anderson's processing the evidence now."

"There was a cane," Sally added quietly, suspicion coloring her tone, "and a carton of milk found nearby."

"The man himself is all tucked away in the hospital, but we've got pictures." Lestrade added, watching John closely. "What do you say we go take a look?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Day 329**

It took longer than John remembered to make the trip down to Forensics. Of course his only memories of making this trip were from _before_ and anything was bound to seem slow when you weren't half sprinting in an effort to keep up with a long-legged detective. _The bum leg and the broken ribs probably don't help either_, John acknowledged to himself as he moved down the corridor. Finally and perhaps most importantly, was the fact that John wasn't in any hurry to get there. Anderson would be in Forensics. What an idiot. How did he still have a job? Surely he had managed to botch an investigation enough by now for someone to actually notice. But no, Anderson was still in Forensics. John wasn't entirely sure he was up to dealing with both Anderson and Donovan, not without something snapping inside.

_Fuck them_, John thought viciously as he hobbled along. _Fuck them both._

Lestrade walked to one side of him, hovering close enough that John knew that the inspector was concerned that he was going to topple over without warning. The lines of his body, the openness, even the way he moved and watched the rooms and people that they passed – they all said _friend_. John wasn't sure he would have noticed that before he met Sherlock.

Sally on the other hand… well, she marched along on John's other side. And just like John knew that Lestrade walked at his side as a friend he knew that Sally regarded him as anything but. No, that sneering look of suspicion was back on her face as was that gleam in her eye that said she thought it was too much of a coincidence. All this time later she still thought Sherlock was guilty, and if Sherlock was guilty then John was guilty. So she watched him like she thought he was going to bolt at any moment; like he was going to produce a gun and start shooting like a madman.

_Silly Sally, _John thought. _I know better than to bring a gun into Scotland Yard. You'd just love it though, wouldn't you?_ _Though if I _was_ to do something that stupid you wouldn't be around long enough to do anything about …_

Lestrade cleared his throat slightly and gave John a gentle bump in the shoulder. Not enough to jar him but enough to remind him where they were. A quick look at the inspector showed a familiar look on Lestrade's face. It was the _Christ, please don't say what you're thinking_ look. He'd given it to Sherlock all the time, usually when he could tell that the detective had deduced something shocking and was about to reveal it at an inappropriate time – so pretty much anytime the two men interacted.

Sherlock usually ignored it. John sighed and kept his thoughts to himself. Sherlock always said that he thought loudly – apparently too loudly if even Lestrade could catch the gist of his thoughts.

When they finally arrived at Forensics John was trembling. _So weak, so bloody weak_. He tried to not let the brief flash of triumph that he experienced show on his face. Lestrade paused and opened the door. "Why don't you go tell Anderson that we're here," he jerked his head at Sally. "I want to give John a chance to catch his breath."

They stared at each other for a long moment, seconds ticking by with an invisible finality. _Everybody dies_, John reflected. He could feel the march of minutes in his bones. One after the other: left, left, left-right-left. Someday it would all be over. At least for him.

For now though he should take the minutes that Lestrade was buying him. He should take them and close his eyes, take as deep breath, and put on his armor. Because who was he kidding, they all knew that this was a bad idea. Putting him in a room with both Anderson and Donovan, in the state he was in?

_Christ, it'll be a bloody miracle if we all get out of there alive._

Lestrade snorted. "Don't know what I was thinking, proposing a situation that involves you and those two in the same room." John opened his eyes. It was just he and Lestrade out in the corridor; he can see Donovan out of his peripheral vision, moving towards a man at the back of the lab. "You going to be alright?" the detective inspector asked gently.

"I'll be fine." John retorted shortly, a bit sharper than intended. He tried to make it up by smiling at the inspector. It wasn't a pleasant smile. John could feel it as it stretched his lips and made the left side of his face sting like he'd just dipped it in lemon juice.

Lestrade sighed. "I believed you more before the grin, John." John let the smile fall from his face with a bit of relief. "You'll be okay," he reassured the doctor.

"Thanks," John rasped, because there was nothing else to say.

Anderson looked up as John and Lestrade entered, a bit of a surprise marching across his face. "Detective Inspector," he greeted. "John. What are you doing here?"

The glare that Lestrade gave Sally Donovan made John's lips twitch with the ghost of a genuine smile. It twisted his heart a little bit too, the way the inspector's browns drew together. _Stop it John_, he told himself sternly_. Greg looks nothing like Sherlock, even when he glares_.

But he did, just a little.

Of course, to John, everyone looked a little like Sherlock.

"I was just about to tell him," Sally retorted defensively. "You didn't take as long as I thought you would." Lestrade raised an eyebrow and managed to continue glaring at her all at the same time. It was an impressive feat.

"We are here," the inspector explained, turning back to Anderson, "because John thinks he can identify the John Doe over at UCH that was picked up this morning. I'm going to need to see the pictures and the evidence recovered from the scene." Anderson stared at him blankly. "Now Anderson," Lestrade instructed patiently. "We haven't got all day."

_Idiot._

Anderson hadn't changed much in the time since Sherlock's death. Just like Sally. Both of them – it was like time had barely touched them. _Bastards_, John thought viciously. Why did they get to be walk around and continue life like it was normal?

Anderson was digging around under the worktop and muttering to himself as he discarded various bags of evidenced in a haphazard manner that made even Sally wince. "Here we are!" he exclaimed after a moment. He laid the long aluminum expanse of a cane in front of them. "There are a bunch of little things, and the milk is in the…"

"No, no. This will be fine. Pull up some of the pictures of the vic, eh? See if we've got any good ones of his face." Lestrade reached forward and picked up the cane. "Is this yours?" he asked, his tone clearly indicating that he knew it was but he was asking because he believed in being thorough. Good cop.

"Yes," John answered shortly, without hesitating.

"How can you be sure?" Lestrade gave Sally the _Please stop talking _look. Christ, that man could speak with his face.

John's breath hissed in his nostrils but he answered anyway. "There's a dent halfway up. It got slammed in a cabbie door once. My initials are carved in the indentation."

"Got bored did you?" She quipped. Clearly she either wasn't smart enough to read Lestrade's face or she was just stupid enough to keep talking anyway.

_Both_, Sherlock's voice in his head announced. If he'd been alive he wouldn't have even bothered looking up from his phone while he responded. Of course if Sherlock had been alive they wouldn't even be in Forensics anyway. No, he would have reduced the evidence to insignificance having already deduced everything he needed to know from the mud on Lestrade's shoes and the distinct smell of hospital cleaner that lingered on Donovan's clothes. No, if Sherlock was still alive then meeting with Anderson would have been not only pointless but an open invitation for disaster.

"No," John answered shortly, feeling his breath hitch uncomfortably in his chest. "Sherlock did." He remembered that moment perfectly. Of course, he remembered all of his time with Sherlock with a level of detail that did the dead detective proud.

* * *

"_Bored. Bored. BORED." John stuck his head out of the bathroom and watched with mild amusement as his flatmate strode back and forth across the living room in his robe, his arms waving madly around his head. It rather looked like he was trying to fly. "Bored. John. I'm BORED." John couldn't help but smile with exasperated affection as Sherlock paused in his current crossing of the room with one foot on the back of the sofa and the other sunk down between the cushions. "Why can't somebody just get murdered?"_

"_Bit not good," John called as he ducked back into the bathroom. Sherlock muttered something that John couldn't quite make out. It made him smile anyway. A second later he froze and stared at his toothbrush suspiciously. "Sherlock…?" he called, unable to take his eyes of his toothbrush. "Sherlock why does my toothbrush smell like bleach?"_

_Another muffled comment. John stuck his head back out of the bathroom. "Sherlock?"_

"_I had to disinfect it," the detective remarked moodily, still stuck in his ridiculous pose atop the sofa with his arms crossed across his chest while he stared hatefully out at the street below. _

"_Why?" John asked, feeling as though he rather shouldn't._

"_I used it to clean a bit of stuck lung tissue off a cadaver's ribs. Smoker. Messy. Didn't think you'd want that all over your brush. I boiled the brush first. Didn't think that'd be good enough so I went ahead and bleached it and then boiled it again. It should be fine now." He didn't bother to turn and look at John who was staring at him, open mouthed._

"_Why _my_ toothbrush, Sherlock?"_

"_Because my tools were still at Barts and your tweezers were too big."_

_John shut his eyes and took a deep breath and then another. They didn't work. "Bloody hell." He muttered. He wasn't sure why it caught his attention now of all times, but as he turned back to the bathroom it did. His cane. Tossed there behind a pile of books and newspaper clippings and covered with more than a bit of dust. He isn't even aware that he's picked it up, that he's turned it over in his hands. Not until he has thrown it._

_Sherlock catches it. The cursed, infernal, fucking bastard _caught it_. What is worse, he caught it and looked at John with a carefully raised eyebrow, the words going unspoken between them: _Is that the best that you can do?

_With a heaving sigh Sherlock collapsed onto the sofa, his legs shifting and moving underneath him in what seems like a single fluid movement, a well executed Olympic dive. John retreated back into the bathroom, but not before he caught sight of Sherlock furiously digging at the piece of metal in his hands with a small knife that he had pulled from God-knows-where._

* * *

John blinked.

Anderson, Donovan, and Lestrade were all watching him with varying amounts of disgust, pity, and empathy written on their faces. How long had he been gone? John cursed silently. He hadn't lost time like that in… months.

_Three weeks, four days, seven hours, thirty-six minutes, and eight seconds. Nine. Ten. Eleven, _Sherlock's logical voice informed him unhelpfully. _And that's only if we're counting episodes that make you lose more than two and a half minutes._

Jesus Christ. If he was going to go insane and have voices in his head why did it have to be _Sherlock's?_

_Of course it is my voice_, he sounded mildly offended now. _Who else could possibly play your conscience?_

Sherlock – his conscience? That was rich.

"If that's not enough," John forced himself to speak, forced his voice to stay steady and calm. _Nothing is wrong. I'm alright. You noticed nothing._ "I'm sure my prints are all over the bloody thing."

"Right," Anderson spoke first, reaching for the cane. "I'll dust for prints and run them."

"Shut up Anderson," Lestrade's voice was weary again, like he could hardly be bothered to stay awake. "His initials are right here." He turned the cane towards Anderson just enough so that the man could catch the glint of _JHW_ scratched into the curve of the dent. "We've all seen him use it too. Do you have that picture ready?"

"Almost. Let me just find it…" Anderson's face folded in on itself a bit and he turned to his computer. The irritable _click click click click click_ of him furiously searching made John's head hurt.

"John, are you alright?" Lestrade's tone was gentle again, as if he was afraid John might shatter into a thousand pieces at the mere sound of his voice.

"He used my toothbrush to get bits of lung tissue off of someone's ribs," John whispered as if that would explain everything. Maybe it did. Still half lost in the memory of it he couldn't take his eyes off the cane still cradled in Lestrade's hands.

"Good God, are you still going on about that tosser? Even after a year?"

"Jesus Christ, Sally," Lestrade cut her off. "Just. Jesus. Shut up."

"Not a year," John murmured, shutting his eyes so that he wouldn't have to look at her. He didn't trust himself to look at her and not try to hurt her. "It hasn't been a year," he corrected more firmly. "Sherlock Holmes has been dead for three hundred and twenty-nine days." Despite the effort to keep his voice steady he could hear his pain in it. It was the pain that made him sit with a gun in his hand every morning; the pain that ate him from the inside out until there was nothing left. It was a cold, lonely death.

He deserved it.

"Anderson?"

"Uh… almost there. Here it… no, wait. That's not his face…" _Click. Click. Click. Click._

_Idiot._

"Ah, here it is!" Anderson exclaimed triumphantly. "Sorry about that. They just upgraded the system. Haven't got things properly sorted yet."

Lestrade touched his arm. "John? Care to take a look?"

He sighed. It hurt. He opened his eyes and turned subtly, leaning forward just enough to see the computer monitor that Anderson tilted in his direction. It took a moment for his eyes to realize what they were seeing. "Damn," he muttered under his breath, leaning forward a bit more. Once he was able to pick the face out of the cuts and contusions it was easy enough. "Yes, that's him."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Like I said, you don't forget the face of a man who is trying to kill you. Not if you actually get a good look." John glanced at the picture again. "Of course, he didn't look like that _when_ he was trying to kill me."

"So you've said," Donovan muttered as she moved up to stand closer to Anderson.

Lestrade swore again and rubbed at his eyes. John was reasonably certain that he had just watch another wave of Greg's hair turn gray before his eyes. "I swear to God, _Sergeant_ Donovan," he snapped, the weariness in his voice giving way to terrible firmness, "If you do not shut your mouth and remove yourself from this lab right now then _it will mean your job_."

Poor Sally couldn't have looked more shocked if she had been a little girl cuddling a teddy bear and said teddy bear had suddenly sprouted fangs and started chewing on her arm. "But sir…"

"It's alright," John's quiet voice overrode the rising bark of Donovan's voice. "I know she doesn't like me because she didn't like him." He turned his gaze to Donovan and for just a moment it… it was if the little part of Sherlock that still lived as voice rattling around in his skull was suddenly staring out of his eyes. He had grown more observant in the time that he had run with Sherlock - that was fact. But this… A hundred little things. A thousand little things. Sights and sounds and scents. Each with a string of information attached to it that led to another hundred little facts dependent on what things or circumstances the first little fact was interacting with. "You hated that you have to work so hard for things that he could see out of the corner of his eye. You hated that his brilliance was attached to someone with a moral compass that you couldn't understand. You hated that he treated crime like a game. You hated that you had nothing on him, no way to bind him or force him into your conception of _right_."

John shifted his weight again, turning so that he could face her directly, keenly aware of the deafening silence screaming through the room. "You hated that he could take one glance at you and read all of your secrets in your knees and the way your jacket wrinkled." The look he gave her was both cold and hot. Everything he had wanted to say to her in the past three hundred and twenty-nine days was written there across his pupils.

"Two and a half years since he pointed it out and you still can't be bothered to bring your own deodorant to your sleepovers – that's just sloppy. Your knees are red and callused so clearly that is still your favorite position. You're unhappy with Anderson because he was supposed to meet you for coffee this morning but he missed it. Probably taking his daughter to school. Anderson's tired. His wedding ring is a bit more polished. There are new pictures of his wife in addition to the pictures of his kids. Things are going well with he and his wife but not well enough to break things off with you. He doesn't have the balls for juggling two women though and it is starting to show. You're over protective of him as compensation because you feel that you are losing him. You are having more sex even if it is less enjoyable for you because sex is the only way you know how to keep his attention." He looked from Donovan to Anderson and back again. "Three months." He added, his voice giving out as his vocal cords ceased protesting such use and simply just gave up. "He'll take his family on holiday to… Spain?" He looked pointedly at Anderson. "No. France. Yes, France," he corrected himself. "When he comes back he'll cut things off."

Everyone was staring at him again. He didn't care. He suddenly just wanted to go home. Home to 221B Baker Street where he could make himself another cup of tea and curl up in Sherlock's chair. "Is there anything else that you need?" he asked the inspector, his voice straining.

"Pictures," Lestrade replied after another stunned moment of silence. "We should probably get some pictures of your injuries and file an official report. I'll do that," he added swiftly, heading off the question John knew was written across his face. John just nodded.

"Alright, and then I would like to go home." Lestrade nodded. He understood, just a little. John could see it in his chocolate and gold gaze. He gave the inspector a ghost of a smile. Despite everything it was still there: the bond that had supported Sherlock and now mourned him with an endless round of _What if?_

"Freak." John stiffened.

_Pictures. Home. Pictures. Home, _he repeated silently to himself as he continued to unbutton his shirt.

"God, you are just like him. Don't worry _sir,_" she added as Lestrade opened his mouth. "I'm leaving." She turned back to John. "I thought you were better than that John Watson. It _should_ have been better for you. I told you."

* * *

_Numb. He can't feel anything. Sally is pressing a cup of coffee into his hands. He can already tell it has sugar in it. He doesn't like sugar. He takes the cup anyway. "It will be better for you now, you'll see," she tells him. She probably means her tone to be reassuring but he can't hear it. His ears are still ringing from the sounds of his own screams. They're all he can hear. That, and the sick, melon-splitting _thunk_ of his skull against the pavement. "I told you. I told you when we first met that one day we'd all be gathered around a body and it would be his fault." She shakes her head. "It's better this way. Better it be him than some other poor sod that he's murdered."_

* * *

"…don't be another body, John. Don't be him. Don't let him murder you and replace him with a twisted, psychopathic version of himself."

John has always considered himself to be a gentleman. He is polite. He opens doors and pulls out chairs. He helps little old ladies carry their shopping across the street. He gives up his cabs to those that need it more. He has always seen it as his position to help and serve – he's a bloody soldier and a bloody doctor after all. He generally believes people to be good and reacts as such.

_Foolish_, Sherlock's voice remarked. _But I always did appreciate that about you. You always pointed unerringly towards what was good. You anchored me there._

John doesn't remember moving, but he did.

He doesn't remember snapping, but he did.

He doesn't remember deciding to hit Sergeant Sally Donovan, but he did.

He punched her square in the face.

_Brilliant_, Sherlock drawled.

* * *

**Authors Note: **First, now that Nanowrimo is over I can stop doling out my hoarded prewritten chapters and focus a bit more of my attention on this fic. This means, lovely people, that updates should start happening with a bit more frequency.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, a great big thank you to all of you who have followed, favorited, or commented either by review or via private message. I love hearing from you! It is always a bit of a relief to writer when someone else appreciates the madness being lived out in their skull… because, let us be honest here, all writers are at the very least a touch insane.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: **Apparently at some point I uploaded chapter 5 in place of chapter 9. Sincerest apologies! It's been fixed now. Also many thanks to those that brought it to my attention - clearly I should not be allowed anywhere near my laptop when operating on limited sleep.

* * *

**Day 329**

"I could charge you with assault. I _should_."

They were in Lestrade's office. John wasn't entirely sure how they gotten back. He wasn't entirely sure what had happened after his fist connected with Sally Donovan's face. It all seemed to blur in a white haze. If he didn't know better he would swear that he had taken something recreational. There had been some shouting and Lestrade had grabbed him and then there had been some more shouting – some of it directed at him, some of it directed at Donovan. He didn't even know if Donovan had tried to come after him. It was like hitting her had flipped a switch in his head, completely blanking his consciousness.

It was peaceful. It was nice. John idly wondered if he would get this reaction every time he hit someone or if it was just a pleasant fluke that came with hitting Donovan.

_Bit not good._

"I know," John croaked as he struggled to bring his mind to the present. It _would _be entirely within Lestrade and Donovan's rights to press charges and toss him in a cell. The idea of being charged didn't bother him overly much. He was honestly surprised that he had made it through eighteen months with Sherlock without getting charged with something. Mycroft was probably to thank for that. So really, he had it coming and it wasn't totally unexpected. The idea of getting thrown in jail presented a much more panic inducing problem or at least it would have been panic inducing if he still wasn't lost in some sort of warm, quiet haze. If he had been cold he might have bought the excuse that he was in shock, but he wasn't cold. Far from it. He was warmer than he had been in months. His body still trembled: hurt, exhausted, and pushed past its limits, but he was warm and his hands were perfectly still as they rested in his lap.

Lestrade appeared before him and held a water bottle out and directly into John's line of sight. "Drink. You are probably not done talking yet and right now it's like listening to a rock tumbler try to speak English." After a second of hesitation John raised a hand and took it, his fingers unscrewing the cap without prompting. The inspector propped himself up against his desk and folded his arms across his chest. "What were you thinking?"

John gave him a look. He may not be able to speak as well with his face as Lestrade did but he did know that his face was expressive enough to get the message across. Lestrade sighed and gave him a pointed look in return. "I wasn't," John whispered as he lowered bottle of water, a bit of life returning to his throat as the lukewarm water washed over it. "I just…" John looked away, staring determinedly at the wall while tears picked mercilessly at the corner of his eyes. "Most of London believes that he was a fraud, at least on some level, but they didn't _know_ him. Donovan did." John barely stopped himself from burying his face in his hands, if just for a moment. The paracetamol he had taken before leaving 221B was wearing off and his face had started throbbing again. It was like somebody was using a battering ram to beat out the racing of his heart from inside his skin. "He was a smug, rude, nigh unbearable, selfish _bastard_ but he was not a fake or a murderer."

"I know, John," Lestrade whispered. "God help me, I know." The phone on Lestrade's desk rang and the inspector picked it up with a small catch in his breath. "Lestrade." He paused. "Yes. No. Good." He looked at John. "Alright, I think. Yes. I will. Thanks, Anderson." He put the receiver down and turned back to John. "Anderson's managed to get Sally calmed down a bit and she has agreed to not press charges. God knows she deserved it," Lestrade explained as he recrossed his arms.

"Thank you," John lowered his head, a rush of relief flooding his chest. He wasn't going to jail. He wasn't going to have to leave 221B. "Christ, I don't know what came over me. Hitting a woman." He shook his head, trying to distract himself from the overwhelming crush of emotions that were hitting him, the peaceful white haze retreating before their onslaught.

_Breathe_, the voice in his head soothed. _Just breathe, John_.

"Oh, I'm sure we will be talking about it for a while. John Watson hitting a woman? Not something I ever expected to see," the DI told him. "At least, not unless she happened to be a bloody murderer. Half of the yard will be glaring daggers at you because they think you should land in jail for this and the other half of the yard will want to shake your hand for a job well done." Lestrade's lips twitched suggestively as he spoke. "I told Anderson I would take you home after I took pictures. Bit surprised he remembered we needed pictures of you," he added as he straightened and began rummaging around on his desk. "Three months you said? Before he breaks things off with her?"

"It appears that way, but I'm not Sherlock so I don't know how much my deductions are worth."

Lestrade grimaced. "Damn," he muttered. "That's going to be a nightmare. Maybe I'll take a bit of a holiday then myself. Ah, there it is." He picked up the camera from where it was half buried in paperwork. He must have brought it up from Forensics because John didn't remember it being there before.

John unbuttoned the rest of his shirt while the inspector twiddled with the settings on the camera, swearing a little under his breath. "Jesus Christ," Lestrade's strangled exclamation made John freeze in the process of carefully shrugging off the shirt. "Have you seen a doctor about that?"

"I _am_ a doctor," John pointed out. His tone was a little colder than he'd meant it to be and he instantly tried to rectify the detached _Fuck off_ that his undertone had relayed. "It is just a couple of broken ribs and a bruised gut. They wouldn't be able to do anything for me there that I can't do at home. Some paracetamol, ice, and regular deep breaths to make sure my lung doesn't collapse. I'll be fine."

Lestrade stared at him for a long moment and then sighed in surrender. "Just call me if you need anything, right? And maybe eat something," he added a little more gently, his eyes filling with sorrow as he snuck another look at John's torso.

"I will," John assured him as the inspector started snapping pictures of his bruising.

He really had gotten better at lying since Sherlock died.

* * *

Lestrade had offered to have someone take him home but after being photographed and gently prodded within an inch of his life John was all too happy to politely refuse and escape to the solitary interior of the cab. His entire body was quivering with exhaustion again and his stomach was threatening to heave. "Baker Street," he told the cabbie as he leaned his head back against the seat and let his eyes drift shut.

He didn't sleep but looking at the inside of his eyelids was certainly better than looking out the window. If he looked out the window he would see London. Not just the city, but Sherlock's London. _The battlefield_, Mycroft had called it aptly. Looking out the window of a cab only brought back a dizzyingly large amount of memories. Memories of Sherlock as he blitzed through a deduction; memories of the detective sitting in furious silence as his mind raced in frantic circles behind his eyes; memories of him looking at John, his clear baritone voice asking him a question. He could never ride in a cab without hearing Sherlock; he could never get out of one without seeing the detective emerge from the other side, often exhibiting his mood by popping the collars of his coat so that the angles of the cloth mirrored the angles of his face.

So he usually walked or took the tube, but Baker Street was too far from New Scotland Yard for him to make the walk in his current condition and frankly just the idea of having a ride on the tube right now made him want to pass out.

"Here you are."

John paid his cabbie and slowly mounted the steps to 221B, resolutely moving towards the cuppa and the chair waiting for him in the flat above.

It was just bad luck that Mrs. Hudson happened to be in hallway.

Ever since the last _incident_ in which the poor land lady had needed to poke a very frantic, very loud, screaming John Watson awake before he made the whole bloody street call the police he had been very careful to keep his distance from the landlady. He still hadn't quite forgiven himself for pulling a gun on her, even if he had been half asleep.

For God's sake, he – John Hamish Watson – had pulled a gun on Mrs. Hudson. Had shoved a fucking loaded gun into her face and clicked the safety off before her gentle, though terrified, voice had managed to make its way through the delirium of his nightmare.

If Sherlock had been alive he would have thrown John out a window, repeatedly. Or at least made it look that way. Christ, he'd nearly jumped out of the bedroom window himself.

Bereft of one overly protective Consulting Detective and unable to force himself to leave Baker Street and all contained therein John had settled for the next best thing. He had made the landlady exactly that… just a landlady. It hurt. Not as much as losing Sherlock but still… it hurt. It was as if he had taken a dull razor to his chest and scraped out whatever remained of his heart.

So many days… so many days he had simply wished to stumble home from the clinic and collapse in Mrs. Hudson's cheery kitchen. So many days he wished for nothing more than to lay his head on the kind woman's shoulder and cry quietly until there was not enough moisture left in his body to form tears – she alone in the world perhaps shared this pain with him. Well, her and Mycroft, but god knows he wasn't about to go cry on Mycroft's shoulder.

Not. Fucking. Happening.

If for no other reason than it would probably send Mycroft into cardiac arrest and John would be damned before he killed both Holmes brothers.

"John."

John started at the soft touch on his arm and glanced swiftly down at the two fingers laying gently against his jacket, the pressure of their touch just enough to reach down to the surface of his skin over the back of his wrist. Mrs. Hudson herself still stood several feet away, her arm outstretched to touch him. Clearly he wasn't the only one who remembered the incident with the gun.

"John? Are you alright dear?" John opened his eyes as Mrs. Hudson's soft voice reached his ears.

_Bloody hell, _he thought, _when did I even close them? _"Just fine," he managed to croak out loud, flinching as the meaningless platitude falls from his mouth. Christ, if there is any phrase in the English language that he hated more than that one he had yet to find it. He stared at Mrs. Hudson, well aware that between the fact that she has a functioning pair of eyes and the fact that he has spoken that he has exactly a snowflake's chance in hell of getting to turn and go up the stairs right now.

"Alright then, come on in for a cuppa. I've got some cake too – lemon, just from the oven," she said as she patted him gently on the arm. John stared after her. She paused at the door to her flat and turned to look back down the entry hall at him. "Well, come on, the cake's just going to get colder and I'm not going to up those stairs with my hip before I've had a proper cup or two. Besides," she added, pursing her lips. "I don't think you'll make it up those stairs right now anyway. Honestly, the things you get into…"

John sighed and followed Mrs. Hudson into her flat.

"Now, are you going to be a dear and tell me what happened? Or am I going to have to sit down in my flat all day and worry about you pacing over my head?" John lowered his cup and studied the swirl of the milk kissed surface. Across the small table from him, Mrs. Hudson ducked her head to give him time to collect his thoughts and nibbled on the piece of cake sitting before her. There was a piece sitting in front of John – oversized. He sighed. He would have to at least attempt to eat some of it. God forbid he offend Mrs. Hudson by turning down her practically famous lemon cake.

He sighed and rubbed at his head. The steady ache that had crept up on him in Lestrade's office had finally morphed into a monster of a headache, which pretty much meant that the only part of him that didn't hurt at this particular moment were his feet. "I got jumped by some bloke coming out of Tesco last night," he answered shortly.

"The Tesco – our Tesco? Over on Melcombe?" John nodded. "What is the world coming to that you can't even do a bit of shopping without being…!" She shook her head.

He rubbed his hand through the short spikes of his hair. "It's no big deal Mrs. Hudson. I came off a bit worse for wear out of the experience, but I've filed a report. Lestrade's looking into things." He picked up his fork and poked at the slice of cake. Some of it even made it into his mouth where he had to wash it down with mouthfuls of tea.

"Lestrade?" the landlady's tone momentarily lifted ever so slightly at mention of the Detective Inspector but then her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Doesn't he work homicide?"

"Uh… yes," John replied warily, unsure where this line of questioning was going to take them but still fairly certain that it couldn't be somewhere good.

She sipped her tea and regarded him, a bit primly, over the rim of her cup. "Then why, pray tell, is he looking into a mugging?"

_Oh, because we're treating it as an attempted homicide given that the bastard stood on my throat until apparently something stopped him, because I sure as hell didn't beat the shite out of him but someone did. No big deal._

"Greg is a friend. It's been a while but he's used to working with me from… before. So he is looking in to it for me." _Nothing else, _he added silently, willing Mrs. Hudson to believe him. He washed another mouthful of cake down. Christ, if he was expected to keep this up he was going to need more tea soon.

Mrs. Hudson _hmmphed_ under her breath. "That's good of him, to remember that you're still friends." She sniffed and looked away. John watched her, suddenly fascinated. In that moment John knew, just _knew_ that the land lady had never quite forgiven Gregory Lestrade for arresting Sherlock.

Of course, when it came to Sherlock, John hadn't really forgiven anyone, especially himself. Something that he was sure was crystal clear to everyone around him, so he couldn't exactly judge Mrs. Hudson for spreading the guilt. Still… "It's mostly my fault," John whispered as he turned the fork over and over in his fingers, watching as it caught the light and reflected it back at him. "Greg is a good man. It was… it is… just too hard, most days," he pushed on, aware that his first statement could be interpreted in a variety of ways that, while true, were not necessarily what he meant. At least not right now. "We would better mates if I let him, it just hurts too much. Can't see Greg without seeing…well." He waved the fork meaningfully.

"How…" Mrs. Hudson paused, biting her lip. She folded her hands carefully before her on the tabletop and took a deep breath before continuing. "How long since you last saw _Him_?" she asked gently, and she wasn't talking about the good DI Lestrade.

"Oh, a while," John replied after a moment, trying to sound dismissive. "I'm getting better Mrs. Hudson, I am."

_Liar. It's been five weeks, five days, twenty hours, eight minutes and nineteen seconds and you most certainly are not getting better_, Sherlock's voice informed him, his deep velvet voice colored with faint exasperation. _You were finishing up some forms in your office and you saw me sitting out in the clinic's reception area. I was reading the paper. You caused a right fuss in your flight down the hall and subsequent frantic tear around the waiting room. Sarah made you go home early._

"Really," he added, ignoring the voice in his head. He reached across the table and laid his hand over hers.

"Good. I'm glad for you, dear. Just… glad."

_Sherlock, _he remarked silently, _you rubbed off too much on the both of us. Rewrit a bit of us and stamped our DNA with a bit of you. _

_Of course I did. I'm brilliant_.

Mrs. Hudson covered John's hand with her other, squeezing it affectionately as he did hers. It was patently plain from the look on her face that she doesn't believe a word he just said.

Less than an hour later John was hunched over the loo being utterly and violently ill, the pain in his ribs nearly making him pass out there on the bathroom floor. The cold touch of the porcelain against his forehead felt good so he just stayed there, unmoving while he waited to see if his stomach was done with him or not. _That's the good thing about lemon_, he mused silently as he waited. _It tastes the same coming up as it did going down._

* * *

It was always a right pain in the arse to kill someone while they were in a hospital. Not impossible, far from it, but annoying nonetheless. There were all the added witnesses in the guise of doctors, nurses, other patients, and the other patient's visitors… the list went on. Security cameras had to be dealt with plus all the machines that the proposed victim was hooked up to. Because, without fail, they were inevitably hooked up to every machine under the sun - the most annoying of which was the simple, pesky heart monitor.

All in all these things mounted up into a bunch of little tasks or extra orchestration that made killing someone in the hospital one of the most annoying things he had ever had to do on god's green earth.

That didn't stop him from doing it though. Not in the slightest.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and surveyed the man that lay in it. God, he could not abide failures. He paused to pull a pair of latex gloves from the box sitting on the nearby chest of drawers, beneath the white boards that were covered in a dozen different handwriting samples and notations about patient care. Wincing at the disturbing powdery interior he flexed his fingers and let the thin plastic covering settle over his digits.

He eyed the knife, pulled from a clever little sheath that strapped to his forearm underneath the sharp button down shirt. Not his first choice in weapons or even his second but it would do. Humming softly to himself he strolled up to the head of the bed, leaned over, and calmly slit the unconscious man's throat.

He continued to hum _La Gazza Ladra_ as he wiped the blade clean on the sheet. The man's blood gushed out of the rather impressive slash on his neck and flowed down his front, pooling in the dips and folds of the blanket that covered his lap. Around him the monitors began to beep in alarm but he ignored them. All of the A&E nurses were currently busy with the influx of patients from a multiple car pileup that had happened just meters from the hospital's entrance.

Bad luck that. Or good. Depended, he supposed, on how you looked at it.

With the knife returned to his forearm - where it would stay until he could properly clean it - he flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders and got down to business.

After all, time was limited.


	10. Chapter 10

_There is a crowd gathered on the street, attracted by the veritable hoard of panda cars and ambulances. They sit there on the curb, lights flashing and doing nothing. No, that's not true. They, combined a handful of uniformed men loitering about with their hands shoved in their pockets, form a barricade around the entrance. A wall of flesh and steel between the gathering onlookers and whatever is going on inside._

_ He pushes his way through the crowd. "Move," he growls, his voice dropping to a dangerous octave as several more enthusiastic onlookers refuse to budge, insistent on maintaining their position as they held their phones up in the air. No doubt this will be all over the internet less than a minute from now. "Move!" He doesn't know if it is the shockingly feral tone of his voice or the shove of his hands that eventually makes them part, but frankly he doesn't really care._

_ "You." His head whips to the side and picks out the figure that spoke. _

_ "Anderson," he demands, ignoring the look of utter shock on the other man's face. "What's going on? What's happened?" Anderson just stares at him, all color draining from his face. "Well?" he snaps, surging forward. Wordlessly, unable to take his eyes away from him or reply, Anderson steps aside and motions to the door of 221B and Sherlock sweeps past him._

_ He meets a similar lack of resistance at the door, the two men posted there taking one look at his face and scrambling to get out of his way. One of them even twisted the doorknob and shoved, opening the door for him. Inside the entry hall Mrs. Hudson is sitting with a red flannel blanket draped around her shoulders. A medic sits beside her, quietly taking her pulse as she talks to the officer crouched in front of her. She sees him and her eyes widen as a soft cry falls from her mouth. He ignores her and sprints up the stairs, his long legs making short work of them in response to the involuntary glance his former landlady sent flickering to the flat overhead._

_ He is on the floor, there between the two chairs. "No," he whispers hoarsely, his voice suddenly failing him. _

_ From where he is standing with his back to the door Lestrade pivots and looks him full in the face. The emotions… he can't track all of the emotions that fly across the Detective Inspector's face before it finally settles into a cold, hard fury._

_ "I knew it," he utters, not shouting. Not quite. "I knew you could just fucking leave us all behind. I knew you could do it to me, to Mrs. Hudson, to your own damn brother! But John? God damn it, Sherlock, how could you do it to John?" Sherlock doesn't flinch. He makes no move to avoid the fist coming towards his face. He stumbles and goes down beneath the force of Lestrade's knuckles cracking into his jaw. "You're too late," Lestrade's voice cracks as he stands over the Consulting Detective. "God damn it, Sherlock, you're too bloody late." _

_ Sherlock kneels on the floor of 221B, one hand outstretched towards the jumper clad body and the short spikes of hair rendered impossibly bright in the sunlight coming through the windows. "John," he whispers softly, but there is no answer. There will never be an answer. _

_ It is there, on the floor of a little flat in London, with a throbbing jaw and eyes that see nothing but the shape of the Browning and the splatter of brain matter across furniture and wall, that Sherlock Holmes truly dies._

* * *

"John!" Sherlock Holmes fell off the makeshift bed – little more than an army cot with a thin pillow and worn blanket – and hit the floor in a great tangle of limbs. Chest heaving, he untangled himself carefully and pushed himself to his feet. "No," he said out loud to the empty room. "Not happening. I forbid it." He scrubbed at his face hard enough to elicit a wince and vaguely noticed that the back of his hands were bleeding. He must have been digging at them in his sleep. If the – he paused and glanced at his watch – two hours and twenty-four minutes that he had been out counted as _sleep_ that is, which he doubted.

On his knees he pushed aside the pathetic excuse for a bed and carefully pried up the loose floorboard. It was rather cliché as far as hiding places went but when you lived in a flat the size of a postage stamp the options were rather limited. From within the cavity beneath the floorboard he pulled out a small wooden box, beaten and battered. He flipped the lid open and sat back on his heels, staring at the contents.

Inside the plain little wooden box was an eclectic mix of items: a slightly battered pink encased mobile, the identifying badge of one Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, a spare magnifying glass - pocket sized, two packs of unopened cigarettes, and a small plastic bag of fine grained white powder. It was the powder that stared back at him.

He preferred needles. Less mess. In, press, out, over. Simple.

Maybe that was why he bought the powder.

With trembling hands he picked up the packet and rubbed it between his fingers, thinking. After he had left Baker Street the night before it had been all he could do to not go back to that alley beside the Tesco and murder the bastard that had tried to kill John. Sherlock has no compunctions about murder, not anymore.

_Recent prison release. Second hand clothes. Homeless, _his mind rattled off at him as he sat and turned the cocaine over in his hand.

_OBVIOUS! Honestly, Sherrrrlock. This is getting embarrasSING! _He shoved Moriarty off to the side, ignoring the echo of the dead mastermind's disgust. _Westwood!_ Even his hallucinations of Jim Fucking Moriarty were well dressed.

_Familiar with weapons and brute force. No obvious fighting skills. Thug. Incarcerated for assault. Civilian. Previous acquaintanceship with John: unlikely. Inference: hired to kill John. _

His fingers clenched into a fist around the small bag of cocaine. It had taken an entire night, or what remained of one once he had left 221B, walking around London in the slowly tapering drizzle to calm enough to take action. He had started by tapping into the Homeless Network, something he had not done in a very long time. Three hundred and twenty-nine days to be exact. Half of his contacts were dead or otherwise gone. The other half had been… not as helpful as he had hoped.

"_Scary-as-fuck? Big tattoo? Nah, sir, I just stayed out of his way. Didn't want to get to know him no better, get my drift?"_

_Sherlock ground his teeth together._ Any better, _he corrected silently. Bit not good to correct the informants – criminals, yes; informants, no. Or so John had always said._

"_You want to talk to Mickey the Mouse. New bloke. Big ears. Looks like he'd disappear the minute the wind blows. He likes to lurk outside of the shelter over on Whitechapel."_

He had made it halfway to the shelter in mention before his body had betrayed him. Half a week without sleep and scarcely more than a bite of soup and a sip of tea consumed in that amount of time, it was a wonder he hadn't collapsed earlier. John's admonition: _even transportation needs fuel_, echoed in his head.

Ah, but did he want fuel or did he want _fuel_? He stared at the little baggie clutched in his fist and weighed the pros and cons in his mind.

_Pro: My brilliance becomes more… brilliant. I am unstoppable. Con: John would disapprove. Pro: Increased brilliance means that there are increased odds of John being alive to disapprove. Con: John would disapprove. Pro: I haven't used in one month, one week, three days, twenty-one hours, thirty-six minutes, and forty-nine seconds so it is not like I'm forming a habit. It's like drinking one of those nasty energy drinks. Con: John would disapprove. He'd flush it all down the loo before I even had a chance to consider it. _

His stomach lurched uncomfortably, the memory of a well oiled Browning and sun kissed hair far too fresh in his head. As if his brain needed more images of a dead John. The awful "what if" images from yesterday coupled with the Black Locus incident, the pool incident, the time the CIA agent had held a gun to his head, the sniper, and numerous other occasions where John's life had been put on the line during a case were more than enough, thank you very much.

_Con: John would disapprove. Be disappointed in fact._

Sherlock growled, grinding his teeth together as he threw the baggie back into the box. "Fine," he snarled out loud. "Just. Fine." He scooped up one of the unopened cartons of cigarettes instead and slammed the lid of the little box before placing it back beneath the floorboard.

_Aren't you just adorable?_

_Shut up, Jim, you're dead_, Sherlock told him as he fished the almost empty carton of cigarettes from pocket of yesterday's jacket.

_BORING!_

Sherlock sighed and lit the first cigarette. Sitting on his bed he chain smoked the rest of the carton as well as most of the unopened one and tried to focus on one thing and one thing only: saving John.

* * *

He could see how Mickey the Mouse had come by his name. The kid, and he was a kid – eighteen years old at most - was seated up against the wall. He was shorter, shorter than John, and had the look of someone who had recently lost a lot of weight, and not voluntarily. He was of mixed African and English heritage, his skin still glowing like toffee beneath the grunge of street living. Underneath a jacket that, while still in good condition, had seen better days he was wearing a Disneyland tee. _His? No. Two sizes too big. Picked up from the charity. Brought back from holiday. _Between that and the way his slightly large ears stuck out from his head it was a fairly obvious leap to how the runaway had gotten his street name.

"Yeah, I know who you mean. Big bloke. Came through here a couple days ago. Bought a pair of boots off me – didn't like all the loafers in stock," he added, jerking his head to the shelter across the street. "Don't see boots often so I lifted them even though they were too big for me."

Sherlock bit his tongue and took a deep breath. "Did he happen to say where he was going? Who he was? If he had any work lined up?"

The kid blinked at the rapid fire of questions, his eyes glazing over a bit as his muddled brain fought to follow the detective's words. "Uh… wasn't much for talking. Just wanted the boots."

Sherlock ran his fingers through his hair as he whirled around to glance up and down the street so that Mickey the Mouse wouldn't see that he was barely stifling the urge to scream. "Thanks," he said shortly, his mind scrambling, blitzing through the options that remained available to him. He fished a tenner out of his wallet and dropped it in the kid's lap. "Get yourself something to eat," he instructed firmly, ignoring his own stomach as it growled at him. He whirled again and went stalking down the street, hands shoved as deep into his trouser pockets as he could get them.

"Wait! There was a man with him! Is that important?"

Mickey the Mouse's words brought Sherlock to a screeching halt mid step and he whirled back around. "Possibly," he tried to sound indifferent, bored. "What can you tell me about him?"

"Scary. Scarier than the other guy you were askin after. Not as big. Soldier."

"How could you tell?" Sherlock asked, arching one of his dark brows.

"He just was. Stood like one. Had that military sort of haircut. He wasn't… normal. Not even in that suit. S'why I noticed him at first – that suit. You don't get blokes dressed like that running round with people like me. Even scary ones," Mickey twisted his hands in his lap and failed to repress a shudder.

"While I'm sure your primitive emotional response to him is quite accurate," Sherlock spat, trying so very hard to temper the bite in his tone. He needed Mickey, needed what he knew. Scare tactics didn't work with the homeless. It just made them bolt. "His physical appearance is what I am after. What did he look like?" He dropped another tenner in the kid's lap, hoping the small bribe would smooth over the edge he could hear growling in his voice. He fought the urge to pinch his nose, to scream as Mickey took a moment to calm himself. _People skills, John, _he muttered inside his head, _not my forte. _

"Uhhh…short brown hair, blue… no. Gray eyes. Same color as his suit. Oh, and a tattoo! He had a tattoo!"

"Where? What did it look like?"Sherlock fought the urge reach down and shake the answer out of Mickey. Instead he began pacing, moving back and forth restlessly in the small area directly in front of the kid. He hadn't felt this pressured since… since…

Since the pink lady's phone rang and a nameless voice on the other end gave him a time limit. _Not quite true, _he corrected impatiently. _More like standing in front of that bloody painting and listening to that kid count down. The bit between Moriarty blowing his own brains out and jumping from the roof wasn't exactly a holiday either. _

"Just here, on the underside of his wrist." Mickey tapped just above the cross of veins on his forearm. "Looked like a winged sword. There was some writing too but I couldn't make it out. Saw it for just a sec, yeah? When he paid me for the boots." Sherlock froze and felt the blood leave his face at the paltry description. "Not much else about him. They were here and gone so quickly." He clutched the money that Sherlock had thrown at him in his fingers, gripping it as if he was afraid that the suddenly still man standing above him was going to swoop down and rip it from his hands. "Was that helpful?" he asked.

"Very," Sherlock said shortly as he pulled out another couple of bills. He didn't even bother to look and see what they were before he dropped them into Mickey's lap. He didn't need to look back to know that the homeless boy was staring after him, bills clutched to his chest as the detective strode away, throwing a hand in the air to summon a cab.

_I tooooold you, _Jim sang smugly. _I told you that you couldn't stop them!_

Sherlock flexed his long fingers, curling them around an imaginary neck as he slid into the summoned cab. He needed to find the man who had tried to kill John. Now.

* * *

Sherlock leaned against the shelf that housed a rather dizzying array of tea and flashed the female employee a smile that made her cheeks turn a very interesting shade of red. He tipped his head to the side, well aware that it showed off the slash of his cheekbones and the curve of his lips. "So what was all that fuss about this morning?" he asked, eyes wide as he dropped his voice to a rumbling whisper and leaned down towards her. "All those panda cars – is it normally like that around here?" Captured by his charm – and Sherlock was well aware that he could be utterly and completely charming when the situation required it – she unconsciously mirrored his movements and leaned in. _Blonde. Dyed – at home, not professional. Natural red head. Puffy eyes. Putting herself on display. Overly flirtatious. Recently single. He left her. Looking for a rebound. Excellent. _"I heard that someone _died_."

"No, no one died. He was banged up pretty bad though," she whispered into his down turned face. "My mate Kathy found him this morning while she was takin' out the rubbish. Just lying there in heap, all soaked through from being out in the wet for who knows how long. Shocked she was; told me she screamed like a little girl when she turned around and saw him there. Thought he was dead with the way his face was all busted up. She said that she could hardly tell that he _had _a face. It was bloody _awful_." Sherlock felt a flush of pleasure at her words and his hands flexed slightly against his trousers. It was a fight to keep the expression of fascinated horror on his face. The memory of his knuckles connecting with the man's jaw was, despite current circumstances, intensely satisfying. He wanted to smirk. Instead he turned his lips down and let his jaw drop open a little.

"Christ, how terrible!" he exclaimed, feigning horror. "Is he going to be alright?"

The girl… _mid twenties. Cat owner. Smoker – no, recently quit. Nicotine patch, left arm…_ shrugged artfully as she inched closer. "No idea," she told him, pursing her lips that were painted a rather alarming shade of pink. "Called the Met down cause we thought he was dead and they were the ones to discover that he was alive. None of us wanted to get that close, yeah? They didn't tell us exactly but heard the DI tell the medics to get him to the A&E at UCH."

"Of course." Sherlock snapped upright, every ounce of _charming_ leaking from his frame as he suddenly loomed over the blonde. She took a step back, her smile slipping and the blush fading from her cheeks as he morphed from _flirtatious new bloke _to _tall, dark, and dangerous_ in a blink of her eyes. "That shade of blonde is ghastly on you," he told her sincerely. "Too much yellow."

* * *

"Can I help you?" Sherlock stopped in front of the receptionist's desk and flashed the dazzling smile that had served him so well back at the Tesco. The woman seated behind the high desk looked up from her computer and peered over her half moon spectacles at him, her lips pressed into the hard line of someone who was having an absolutely shitty day. He broadened the grin so that he flashed the brilliant white of his teeth at her and made a consummate effort to push the warmth of the grin all the way to his eyes. The tightness around her mouth loosened ever so slightly but that was it.

_Ah, well, worth a shot,_ he shrugged internally as he fished something out of the inner jacket pocket and flashed it in the woman's face, his thumb accidentally – if completely on purpose, it wouldn't do to have her see Lestrade's face on the identification – covering the photo. "Yes, I'm here fo…"

The look on the receptionist's face lightened considerably at the sight of the badge. "Down that hall, take a right, another right, and then a left. Can't miss it. Initial response has the room taped off for you." Sherlock's eyes momentarily narrowed, his mind turning over her words and analyzing them.

"My thanks," he grinned as he slipped the DI's identification back into his jacket pocket, his long fingers nimbly buttoning the suit. "Hell of a day, yeah? Hang in there," Sherlock told her, rapping her worktop with his knuckles as he passed by and headed down the hall.

_Initial response has the room taped off_,he repeated in his head as he moved, his long legs eating up the distance. _Inference: crime scene. Someone beat me here._

Sherlock paused before going around the second corner, his eyes landing on the two men standing outside of the wide entrance to a large, shared room. Two narrow strips of yellow tape formed an X over the doorframe behind them. He waited a moment as they stood, shifting from foot to foot as their gaze followed the buzz of the hospital around them, until he had captured a good look at their faces and run them against his internal registry of known law enforcement officers. Now _that_ was a database he hadn't needed to pull out of his mind palace in a while.

He didn't know them or, more importantly, they didn't know him. He detached himself from the wall and moved around the corner, sauntering across the floor. He was halfway across the ward before the two officers took notice of him and their eyes narrowed speculatively at his approach. Wordlessly he pulled Lestrade's badge from his pocket once more and held it in front of them, watching carefully as they both spared half a second to glance at it.

"You're not Lestrade," one of them responded and Sherlock barely controlled the urge to double check that his grip had the photo on the ID obscured. Instead he shut it and slipped it back into his pocket, regarding the officers coolly. "I talked to Lestrade. This is his case."

Sherlock arched one eyebrow and stared down the line of his nose. "I was in the vicinity and Lestrade sent me over," he drawled coldly. "Apparently he wanted someone he _knew_ on the scene as soon as possible. He will be here momentarily." He offered the cops a frigid and clearly faked smile that barely managed to curl his lips. "I'll just wait for him inside. We wouldn't want to cause a pileup out here, would we?" Both cops opened their mouths to protest but he already had his long fingers on the door handle. "As you were," he drawled over his shoulder as he ducked under the tape and slipped through the barely opened door.

Inside the room was empty. It hadn't started the day that way. _Disheveled bedclothes. Monitor beeping. Cafateria food, still warm. Left in a hurry. _The bed second down on the right had its privacy curtains drawn and after a cursory, if observant, glance to the rest of the room Sherlock slipped through the slight opening in the curtains and froze.

_Fifteen stone. Scarred lip. Knife cut likely. Tattoo. Neck. Dislocated jaw. Broken Tibia. Cut throat. Dead. Very, very dead._

Sherlock grabbed the bottom rail of the hospital bed and gripped it until his knuckles burned white. "I will not be sick," he whispered softly. "I will not be sick," he repeated as he shut his eyes and forced himself to inhale, the iron tang of fresh spilled blood coating the back of his throat. He should pull out his magnifying glass and take a good look at the body before Lestrade got here. Christ, he should just leave, get out before Lestrade came marching through that door and brought Sherlock's death crashing down around him.

The world's only Consulting Detective found himself unable to move though as he stood at the foot of a dead man, his lips desperately repeating a hopeless mantra in an effort to keep his stomach from rolling and heaving its way up his throat and out of his mouth.

_I told you, _Moriarty smirked, _but you didn't LISTEN. You NEVER listen, Sherlock. Not until it is too late._

Sherlock swallowed, unable to respond to the damned voice echoing in his head as he stared at the untidy slash and brush of blood across the wall above the head of John's attacker, the blood only dried enough to stop it from dripping down the wall.

_**I O U.**_


	11. Chapter 11

There once was a boy.

He was a brilliant boy; everyone said so. He was walking by seven months and speaking in complete sentences by a year. A brilliant, _good_ boy his mother's friends called him as he sat quietly on the floor, brow furrowed as he put together puzzles. By two and a half he was reading, fluently. He was three and a half the first time he read Machiavelli's _The Prince_, which had horrified Mummy.

At school he was teased, once, and he retaliated promptly by getting them all in trouble. Not tattling. No, never that, but by twisting the facts and planting evidence to convince the authorities in his little existence that his bullies had committed some terrible wrong. Frederick "Freddie" Cooper even got expelled. After that everyone left him alone. Well, they left him alone unless he wanted otherwise. By the end of Year One he had the entire primary school in his control, students and teachers alike drifting in orbit around his whim.

They didn't know it of course, but that didn't make it any less true.

And he was so very alone.

Then one day he was ushered into the nursery by his father – it was one of his few memories of the man – and made to peer over the edge of a frilly bassinet. The baby inside was long and thin, not at all like the little pudgy figures he had seen scattered through books and magazines. Fog gray eyes peered up at him through multiple layers of long black lashes and little rosebud lips pressed together as boy and baby stared at each other.

Seven years old and just for a moment the boy's heart stopped beating.

* * *

There was once a young man, standing on the brink of manhood.

He was a brilliant young man; everyone said so. They were right to say so. He was a nice young man, ever so polite with a soft, precise voice. Not like his little brother, Mummy's friends commented. _He_ was a right little terror he was, dashing all over the place and blabbing everyone's secrets to whoever would stand still long enough to listen. How he knew them they were never quite sure – the little sneak must listen at windows too. No, they clucked and shook their heads, all of the brilliant, all of the _good_ seemed to have been used up in the elder boy. He was extraordinarily brilliant, he was.

The brilliant young man listened to their words in silence, the slight tightening around his lips the only indication that he was less than pleased with their line of complaints. Those silly women, those daft old friends of Mummy's they always failed to see that their complaints about the nuisance of the younger brother went ignored. If they noticed that those who sought to torment the little boy at school mysteriously found themselves in more trouble than they could rightly perpetuate, well… it was their own fault for trying to cause so much mischief. Those troublesome children were punished accordingly by those placed in authority over them – people who had no idea that they were carrying out the wishes of a brilliant young man who held the entire town in thrall. A brilliant, _good_ young man whose influence had long ago escaped the simple boundaries of school and classmates and spread to businesses, churches, and local government authorities.

Eighteen years old and just for a moment the young man's heart stopped beating as he turned and left his brother behind.

* * *

There was once a young man, not long out of university and still early in the prime of his life.

He was a brilliant man; everyone said so. Brilliant and cunning and ever so precise: executing his job flawlessly and with an ease that left his superiors scratching their heads in bewilderment. No matter the task set to him it was completed neatly, perfectly, and at the very least exactly on time if not disgustingly early. Those above him noticed and sought to use him, promoting him through the ranks with an unheard of speed. Everything the man touched was golden. Behind his back, completely unaware that their whispers reached his ears, those bitter of his success mocked him and called him the "Midas of England".

Those who whispered were never promoted again and many of them threw their hands up in disgust and sought employment elsewhere.

The young man, oh so brilliant, smiled and accepted his promotions. He worked many hours, long hours, meticulously building reports and gathering information. He did what he had always done. It was what he was so good at doing and by doing it his sphere of control grew. It grew and grew, eating up cities at first and then entire countries began to topple as he quietly climbed the ladder of success. The world was falling into his palm and no one knew it.

But then again no one was meant to.

Then one day the brilliant young man got a phone call and for the first time in his highly successful career he informed his superiors that he was taking the rest of the day for personal reasons. He walked from his office and hailed a cab, the hateful thing, several streets over and gave the cabbie the name of the hospital that the kindly sounding Sergeant had passed along over the phone. He had met with the Sergeant outside of the hospital room: a kind man his own age whose soft dark hair was already beginning to silver ever so faintly at the temples. He listened intently as the Sergeant talked.

Morphine. Heroin. Cocaine. Practically a whole pharmacy coursing through his system. The brilliant young man nodded numbly as he watched the unconscious figure lying in the bed beyond the door. In the end he shook the Sergeant's hand, the hand that had pounded life back into his brother's chest and thanked him with a steady, precise tone that revealed nothing of what was going on inside of him.

Twenty-six years old and just for a moment the young man's heart stopped beating as he sat beside the hospital bed and held his brother's hand.

* * *

There was once a man.

He was a brilliant man; everybody said so. Brilliant and cunning and powerful: so very, very powerful. He ruled the world, or just about, and the number of people that even knew that their lives were being controlled from a smartly furnished office in the heart of London were very, very few. He toppled a government, commandeered troops to send to a badly planned rebellion in central Africa, smoothed over a missile crisis in Iran, orchestrated a cease-fire treaty between two South American drug cartels (and their respective governments) and sent the US President a present for his birthday – and that was just over breakfast.

With each day the world turned his already considerable influence grew, blanketing the globe. He was still as polite, precise, and brilliant as ever: the unfailing epitome of the English gentleman. He spent his life pouring over reports and standing in the shadows, watching the patterns of the world emerge beneath his hands. His work was his life and he poured himself into it, mind and soul, carefully watched over by a select trusted few.

Elsewhere people mocked them behind closed doors and thanked numerous deities that they did not have to suffer beneath the rigid expectations of such an exacting man, never mind how _brilliant_ he was. Those that stood guard at his doors and ran his errands just smiled and pitied the rest of the world behind a blank expression. Their hours were long, but his were longer. His standard for their work was high, but the standard for his own work was higher.

They watched as he labored through night after night to avert the disasters the human race sought to inflict upon themselves. They watched as he stopped wars before they even began. They stood in silent testimony as he worked tirelessly, pushing laws of justice and equality into existence in more countries than most of them could count. They observed as he promoted learning and tolerance, funded the research and process of finding cures for diseases beyond count, and orchestrated relief efforts to the far corners of a weary earth. They brought him his tea and pastries; they guarded his life with their own as he built schools, libraries, parks and caught traitors and monsters alike.

While they watched him, he watched through cameras and the trusted eyes of agents as the one who was nearly as brilliant as himself, if exceedingly less polite, tore about London like a madman. He watched. He smiled. He went back to work.

Then the phone call came. The Sergeant, long since a Detective Inspector and his dark hair almost entirely silver now, spoke on the other end of the line. The trusted few watched as the brilliant man's face went white and his phone slipped from his hand to clatter against the polished floor.

Some days later he stood on the damp grass, trusted assistant and bodyguards pulled back to give him the illusion of privacy. He stared at his reflection in the great expanse of polished black stone, his jaw still throbbing from the blow that a certain very angry, grief stricken ex-army doctor had landed in a heated argument over who would possess a certain Stradivarius violin. It was one of the few confrontations in his life that he had lost.

Thirty-nine years old and just for a moment – a very long, agonizing moment – the brilliant man's heart stopped beating as he stood at his brother's grave.

* * *

There once was a man who ruled the world and owned it too.

He was a brilliant man; everybody said so. He was quite and polite and powerful. He was also very alone. He existed in a galaxy of influence in which nearly everyone orbited around this posh, if unassuming, man who worked quietly from an office in London. If you were to ask his supposed colleagues about him they might speculate that he was shagging his pretty assistant or perhaps one of the trim guards that discreetly followed him everywhere but beyond that… nothing. Married to his work, they would nod, chuckle, and probably slip in some joke about how marriage would kill you. Then they would be off, talking about their petty problems: their girlfriends, their boyfriends, their wives, their money – it was a never ending list after all – and all thought of the brilliant man would be gone from their minds.

Just like he preferred it.

He had worked long hours before, but now he worked longer. He had pushed himself hard before, but now he pushed harder. He watched the life of a certain ex-army doctor and occasionally took calls from the silver haired Detective Inspector, with only the slight press of his lips giving away that he was not pleased with what he saw or heard.

Then one day a report crossed his desk: a simple meaningless report and the trusted few watched him furrow his brow in speculative thought.

A week later there was another one, another minor report that provoked the same response.

A month later there was yet another.

A few days later an even more insignificant piece of paper crossed his desk. It was something so barely worth his notice that he almost passed it along without another thought but instead a single line of text caught his eye and he took a closer look. For the first time in a long time the trusted few saw his lips twitch in what passed for a smile.

After that he worked even longer, even harder. If asked the trusted few would have said it was not possible but he, in his brilliance and persistence, proved them wrong. The expensive London townhouse that he rarely saw anyway, for all the money he paid to keep it up, now went completely unused. The floor above his office was emptied citing repairs as a reason for the relocation and there, practically overnight, a flat took shape. His days and night blurred as he moved through the world, watching patterns form and making connections. He ate only when reminded and slept even less.

Then one day his assistant put down her phone, took the report about the newest round of elections taking place in Korea from his long thin hands, and ordered him upstairs to rest. Seeing nothing but the iron strength he valued her for mirrored in her gaze he sighed and agreed, telling her to bring him a pastry and a cup of Earl Grey in his sitting room. It would be no use trying to sleep on an empty stomach after all.

It was there in the sitting room built in what was once a rambling expanse of offices overlooking the view of London that everything changed.

"Sebastian Moran. I'm going to need everything you have on him. Immediately."

The brilliant, lonely man paused just inside the door of his sitting room and looked across the expanse of the richly furnished room to the tall, lean figure standing at the window.

Forty years old and just for a moment the lonely man's heart stopped beating as the rich baritone voice rolled across his skin.

But then it started up again.


	12. Chapter 12

Sherlock waited under a – rather impressive, in his opinion – façade of patience for Mycroft to respond as he stood and stared out the window. He was not quite sure why he bothered, Mycroft being Mycroft could probably see the shadow himself wheeling about the room, pacing off the horrible pressure he felt condensing on him.

_Tick- tock, tick –tock. _

"To what do I owe this _delightful_ surprise?" Mycroft asked from behind him, moving further into the room.

Sherlock fought the urge to roll his eyes and turned to look at his brother over one shoulder, a dark eyebrow rising elegantly. "You know I hate to repeat myself," he drawled, watching as his brother settled slowly into an overly cushioned chair and dropped his phone down on the polished mahogany table. Anthea, or whatever her name was this week, knew he was here then. Sherlock wondered idly if she would be bringing him some tea too. A cuppa suddenly sounded a lot more appealing then he would like to let on. Despite the fact that it had turned into quite a lovely day outside he was still chilled right down to his bones. _Probably a touch of shock_, he mused to himself as he watched Mycroft look up at him again, the other man's lips twisting into the barest of frowns.

"Come, Mycroft, you honestly didn't believe that I had _died_ did you?" Mycroft pressed his lips together and he stared at the younger man. A look of childish glee shot across Sherlock's face. "You did, didn't you? You thought I _died!_" The world's only Consulting Detective rocked back on his heels and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, an indecently wide grin stretching his lips. "You thought I died," he repeated, unable to control that absolute pleasure in his voice. "Fantastic." He lowered his gaze and smiled smugly at the British Government. "So when did you figure it out?" he crossed from the window and dropped himself into an elegant slouch in the chair opposite Mycroft. The elder Holmes just stared, lips pursed. Sherlock raised his eyebrow again. "Tell me you figured it out _before_ I picked your pocket and started using your credit card all over London."

"I knew," Mycroft retorted softly, folding his hands in his lap. "Barcelona," he answered after another minute. "I realized after the stunt you pulled in Barcelona. You were sloppy," he told his brother.

Sherlock smiled tightly and lifted his eyebrow again in silent retort. "Was I?"

"Yes," Mycroft replied, the beginnings of anger warming in his voice. "Just like you were slopping in Mosco, Beijing, Singapore, Toronto, and Vienna." Sherlock opened his mouth but Mycroft held up a single finger, silencing him. "Let's not forget Washington either. That was a mess, Sherlock, even for you!"

Sherlock steepled his fingers and shrugged. "Washington did get away from me a bit," he conceded, "but everything else… perspective, dear brother, perspective." The grin fell from his face and he met his brother's gaze, completely aware of the cold, hard emptiness showing on his visage. "You cleaned up what I needed you to clean up. Moriarty's small fish: the paper pushers, the ones whose loyalty had not been completely bought up – those whom I thought might prove useful to you. Was I wrong?"

"What of the '_big fish_'?" Mycroft asked instead, watching him carefully. "They would have been more useful."

"I caught them." The words fell coldly out of Sherlock's mouth in an utterly detached fashion. Save for the frigid quality of his tone he might have been talking about the weather. Mycroft's eyes widened almost imperceptibly. Behind him the door to the sitting room cracked open and Anthea, or whatever her name was, slipped in. She had a tea tray balanced on one arm and was rapidly typing out a text with the other hand as she crossed the room. Both men paused, stalling their next comments as she crossed the plush rug and set the tea service down on the table next to Mycroft's phone.

"Anything else?" she asked Mycroft, ignoring Sherlock completely.

"That is all for now," Mycroft responded. Anthea nodded and turned her attention back to her phone, both hands flying over the blackberry's keys as she left the sitting room, the door shutting firmly behind her. Both men watched the door for a moment in silence, just in case, and then Mycroft turned back to the tray and poured tea into the two cups sitting there. "Have some tea," he told Sherlock, watching his brother out of the corner of his eye. "You look like you're going to fall over."

"I'm already sitting down," the detective drawled, but he sat up and took the tea that Mycroft held out in his direction.

"Eleven months, on your own, and now you want my help," Mycroft summarized after sipping at his tea. "Why?"

"Because you have resources that I don't. I could do it on my own and get results but you'll… you'll get them so much faster. And right now I find myself very interested in _fast_." Sherlock lowered his tea and for the first time since his brother had walked into the room he looked Mycroft full in the face and held his gaze. In typical Holmes fashion, the British Government raised an eyebrow and pressed his lips together, waiting. Sherlock sighed. "You retrieved the recording?" he asked.

A touch of surprise at the direction of the conversation ghosted across Mycroft's eyes but he nodded. "Your mobile. Yes."

Sherlock continued to hold his brother's gaze. "Then you know why I jumped?" It was a question. He hadn't meant to make it a question, but he did. _Stupid, stupid_, his mind chided.

Mycroft sighed. "Three assassins. Three targets. It was ingenious really. You jumped to save them." He shook his head. "I told you. I tried to warn you, Sherlock, that caring…"

"… is not an advantage," the detective finished. "I know," he growled, still refusing to look away. "Sentiment is weakness. _I know_. That was the deal, though. My life for theirs. I _died_ and they lived on in safety which left me free to ferret out the threads that Moriarty had poisoned the world with. And _I got them_. All of them, or nearly all of them. All of the big fish."

"Then…" Mycroft paused and took a deep breath. "Sherlock," he added in warning, dangerously close to repeating himself.

"Sebastian Moran. Moriarty's right-hand-man. His chief lieutenant," Sherlock threw his hands in the air and let out a growl of disgust. "You don't like repeating yourself? Fine. I'll repeat myself. I need _everything_ you can find on him and I need it right now. Why? Because, unless James Moriarty has managed to survive having a bullet blow open the back of his skull, Sebastian Moran is here. In London. Right now. And I need to catch him." Mycroft tapped his fingers against the side of his teacup. "Christ," Sherlock swore. "I don't know why I bother. It's probably all sitting in a report on your desk. He tried to kill John. Tried to have him killed at least." Sherlock put down his tea and looked away, shutting his eyes as a now familiar wave of nausea rolled over him. He stood up, fingers moving to button his jacket as he went back to the window and stared out of it. "He broke the bargain," he added unintentionally.

"I'd rather think that you did that first," Mycroft murmured. "Seeing as how you aren't really dead." Sherlock turned his head and glared. "One question, Sherlock. One question for you and I will see what I can do." Sherlock kept glaring but raised an eyebrow in acquiesce. "Why did you jump?"

Sherlock's shoulders stiffened. "I thought we were trying to not repeat ourselves, Mycroft. You know how much time it wastes."

"I am not repeating myself," the elder Holmes drawled softly. "You are merely not listening to my question. _Why did you jump_?"

Sherlock tipped his head and until it pressed against the glass. It was just warm enough outside that the warm puff of his breath didn't instantly fog the glass. So different than yesterday, but that was London in the spring. Or anytime, really. Down below him the city teamed with life, the busy dart of cars and the bustle of people as they went about their ordinary, boring lives. They never dreamed that they lived their entire life just brushing the surface of existence, floating through life in a fragile bubble of safety and order. It could pop at any minute and yet it rarely did.

"You heard the recording. They would have killed Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and…"

"No. Sherlock. That is the reason Moriarty provided _for_ you," Mycroft corrected from behind him. "You went to that roof, you chose that roof, because you knew that you might have to die and you were prepared for it long before he put a name to his threat."

"It wasn't exactly hard to figure out. Assassins from all over the world suddenly sitting on Baker Street? Supposedly after a code that didn't even exist? Child's play," Sherlock retorted sharply, shutting his eyes to block out the view of the ordinary that pranced on below him.

"Sherlock."

The Consulting Detective winced as Mycroft's voice touched him. It was soft - so light and pleading. It had been so long since he had heard his brother's voice sound like that he had all but forgotten that such a tone existed. It was one he hadn't heard since…_Since right before he left for university. Since he told me he was leaving me._

Any other voice, any other request and Sherlock would have fought. He and Mycroft had certainly done little else but fight with each other in the last twenty-two years. Perhaps Mycroft knew this or perhaps he was simply tired of repeating himself. Whatever the reason, his soft voice hit Sherlock like a fist to his gut and all the air fell out of his lungs in a long gasp and in his trouser pockets he clenched his fists so tight he could feel the nonexistent nails of a violinist cut into the palms of his hands.

"John," he whispered against the glass. His voice shook so badly that even he couldn't understand what he had said. He cleared his throat roughly and tried again. "He threatened John. He tried to kill him. He had done it before and he would do it again and such a thing was not to be tolerated. _At all_." He swallowed. "Is that what you were asking, brother? Playing with Moriarty had always required some flexibility and improvisation but I went to Bart's that day with one goal: Moriarty had to die. That he killed himself was a nice twist. That my plan actually worked and I survived the jump was just an even sweeter extra." Sherlock barely stopped himself from rubbing a hand over his face and through his hair and making a mess of himself with the droplets of blood that had welled up from the half-moon indentations in his skin.

Mycroft's grip was gentle, if strong, against his shoulder. Sherlock jumped just a little. He hadn't heard his brother move. "Anthea is getting together everything we have on Moran," his brother announced, his voice practically back to normal. "It shouldn't take more than an hour. Come have some tea."

Sherlock let his brother lead him back to the overstuffed chair and the cup of tea he had abandoned there. If he noticed the single tear beading at the corner of Mycroft's eye he didn't say.

* * *

"I still can't believe you thought I was dead." Sherlock was on his third cup of tea but, despite Mycroft's attempts, had only nibbled the corner off of a pastry. Mycroft had eaten two and was now doing his very best to ignore the last lonely little pastry – all flakey crust and spiced peach filling – that was staring at him from where it sat on the fine white plate. "I even left you a note so that you could keep Mummy from having a fit."

Mycroft lowered his tea and stared at his brother, sitting hunched over in the chair opposite him. Sherlock raised the teacup to his mouth and took another sip before refolding his lanky form around it as if the rapidly vanishing tea was the only remaining source of heat on the planet. "There was nothing in the recording…" Mycroft began, a slight edge of defensiveness creeping into his tone.

"Not the recording. A note," Sherlock corrected. "I left you an actual note… well, kind of. It was written down." He looked up from his tea and smug smirk ghosted across his lips. He still couldn't believe that he had managed to make Mycroft Holmes believe he was dead – at least for a little bit. He had tricked the British Government, something he had not thought could actually be done. Despite the tension thrumming through his bones and the barely held at bay nausea trembling in his gut his mind noted the fact that it had happened. It might prove useful someday and if not, well, it was something he wanted preserved in his mind palace forever, just so he could trot it out and relive it every now and then. "When you gave me my Stradivarius for my twenty-first birthday what did you make me promise you?"

"That in the event of your death the violin would come back to me, a request I thought entirely reasonable given how often you were frequenting hospitals at the time." Sherlock just stared at him, lips twisted in a slightly mocking smile, waiting. "Oh," Mycroft breathed a second later. "Quite clever. Very clever in fact. I completely overlooked it as a matter of sentiment on your part. I did ask the good doctor if I could have the violin but he… _declined._" Mycroft absentmindedly rubbed his jaw.

"He punched you in the face, didn't he?" Sherlock grinned and rubbed his own face, remembering. _Yes. Punch me, in the face. Didn't you hear me? _"He's got a mean right hook."

"Yes he does," Mycroft growled. "I had to cancel a meeting with some very important people because of that. China was not amused."

Sherlock shrugged. "No loss there. China is never amused."

Both men turned at the sound of the door opening. Anthea stuck her head in cautiously, clearly expecting to interrupt the middle of a brotherly spat. She had certainly done so enough times in the past. "Do you want this in here, sir? Or your office?"she asked, eyes widening almost imperceptibly at the scene before her.

Sherlock took another sip of tea and didn't move. The elder Holmes gave Sherlock a long look. "We'll look over it in here," Mycroft sighed and Sherlock fought the urge to smirk. He knew that his brother would much rather pore over the information from behind a solid wood desk with plenty of space to organize things. Sherlock's methods were much more… chaotic.

Anthea eased through the doorway with her arms full of files. It was probably the only time Sherlock had seen her not texting. A smartly dressed man, one of his brother's bodyguards, followed behind her bearing another a smaller stack of files and a closed laptop. "Here you are sir. These are from the usual channels."She laid the stack of files in Mycroft's lap and he promptly handed the top half of the stack to Sherlock whose arm shot out demanding into the space between them. "And these are from our other sources."

"Just put the laptop on the table," he instructed, nodding as he opened the thick file that remained on his lap, setting the smaller file to the side. "And bring some more tea. Oh, and my appointment with…"

"Already sent your regrets, sir, and rescheduled for tomorrow."

"My thanks," Mycroft murmured, already lost to the lure of information. She who went by Anthea smiled fondly at his bent head and carefully stepped around the long length of Sherlock's outstretched legs. Sherlock watched her go from the corner of his eyes, his fingers flipping through the pages of the report as fast as his eyes could scan and record the information contained therein.

"A phone."

"Pardon?" Anthea paused at the door and turned back to him.

"I need a new mobile. Untraceable." He watched her gaze move to his brother and noted, with a slight huff of disgust, Mycroft's slight bob of acknowledgement.

"Of course, sir. I'll bring it right away."

"Mmmph," Sherlock snorted and turned his full attention back to the matter at hand.

* * *

The only downside to John's momentary lapse of character and subsequent attack on Sergeant Sally Donovan was that it left Detective Inspector Lestrade performing some of her more public duties and, God help him, if there was something he hated more than a press conference he had yet to find it. No matter the size, no matter the case he hated them. No, he despised them from the very depths of his soul. Here he was trying to provide information, information that might help some soul not end up on a slab in the morgue and there they were, twisting his every word to engender fear and distrust. Once reporting the news had been an honorable profession, one that inspired trust and promoted truth. Once reporters had been the valued middleman between those who spent their days drenched in crime and the normal populace, but not anymore. Now, now they were naught better than piranhas.

Normally, Lestrade would do just about anything to get out of a press conference. He had made avoiding press interaction into an art form in which he was the next Michelangelo. In the last handful of years he had taken part of a mere dozen press conferences – all of them dealing with high profile serial killers. When it came to more mundane, less sensational, killers he was more than content to leave the press to Donovan. She was more than competent and seemed to actually enjoy the thrill of trying to match wits with the reporters.

Today though, today Lestrade was almost happy to take over her duties. Almost. They were still the press, after all.

Still, Sergeant Sally Donovan was an opinionated pain the arse. She was loud, abrasive, and obnoxious beyond belief. How Anderson had managed to stand, let alone enjoy, a multiple year affair with her was beyond him. Of course, the idea of having an affair at all was completely beyond the Detective Inspector so perhaps that was part of the problem.

_That's first thing in the morning. Me and the wife – we're back together. It's all sorted._

_No, she's sleeping with a P.E teacher._

Lestrade rubbed at his face and glanced at his watch. Five minutes. He had five minutes before he had to go in and sit down at the table and look out at the sea of faces. It was a simple, if alarming murder. No suspects yet. He hoped to be in and out of there in five minutes, maybe ten. Sally would have taken longer but she was better at this than he was, at manipulating words until it seemed like she was imparting a great deal of information while in fact saying very little. Lestrade sighed. She really was a good officer. Excellent in fact, being well on her way to becoming a Detective Inspector herself. In a year or two no doubt she would be gone, promoted upwards, and he would be left to find someone else that could play cat and mouse with the city's papers and news stations. Christ, _that_ was going to be a nightmare.

No, if one ignored her personal abrasiveness – and let's be honest: if he could ignore the personality of one Sherlock Holmes for the good it allowed him to accomplish then managing to ignore the less desirable qualities of Sally Donovan was child's play in comparison – then there was really only one thing wrong with Donovan. She was obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and not in a pleasant way. In fact, it reminded Lestrade uncomfortably of Moriarty's attentions towards the late Consulting Detective. Much less focused and about as dangerous as a single angry bee by comparison, but still it reminded him all the same.

Whatever it was that Sherlock had done to set off Donovan it was something that she couldn't forgive him for. Not in death or even in the face of enough evidence to shatter any allegations brought against him. She mourned that, the loss of a case against him and was forever trying to rebuild it. She worried at it like a dog with a bone. Girl or not, she deserved what John Watson had done to her and then some. It was bad enough that she brought it up constantly to Lestrade but to do that to John? Lestrade shook his head.

Christ, poor John. He had hoped… especially when he had started seeing Sarah again. But no, he was worse than ever: slowly withering away inside of the shell of his flesh.

Lestrade opened the door and walked into the small conference room. It was a small murder, though worrisome, and it had not warranted the use of one of the larger conference rooms to house the dozen or so news representatives that gathered to hear his statement. He set the small file down on the table and opened it. "At approximately ten am this morning a man was murdered at the University College Hospital," he began after a quick, piercing glance to his audience.

"While at this time the victim remains unidentified we are doing our best to find out who he was so that we might bring closure to any family left behind. We want to reassure the public that all evidence points to this being a onetime attack and that we think it unlikely to happen again." In his pocket his phone rang. He ignored it. Damn thing, always had to go off when he couldn't answer it. "We are taking precautionary measures and posting extra surveillance at UCH. We encourage the residents of the city to continue to seek medical attention there per normal but the city's other hospitals are also prepared to handle an increase in patients. Once more we would like to reassure everyone that this is an open and shut case and not something to be alarmed over."

His phone beeped.

Biting back a curse Lestrade reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile. He stared. "Ummm…" he looked up at the gathered press. "We are not taking any questions at this time," he managed to get out. Of all of the things he had and would achieve in his life the fact that he kept his voice level and even in that moment was one of his finest achievements. "We will keep the public informed as we gather more information." Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade stood up and paused to give the room one last sweeping stare. "That is all." Three minutes. In. Out. Done.

_Jesus Fucking Christ, _he couldn't breathe.

His lasted until he was out of the room, his legs giving out just as the door clicked shut. "Bloody hell," he whispered, grabbing for the door jamb to slow his descent to the floor. He shut his eyes and counted, very slowly, to ten and then opened them again.

Still there. It was still there, a single word that turned his entire world on end.

**Wrong.**

Lestrade couldn't help himself. It bubbled up from the center of his chest and rattled along the line of his throat until it burst from his mouth. God help him. It was either this or… what? Tears? A tantrum? He was pretty damn sure he would be completely entitled to either one of those options, even both of them – probably at the same time. Instead, he sat on the floor outside of the conference room with his head between his knees and his mobile held loosely in his hand and wondered what the press thought of the madman howling with laughter just outside of the door.


	13. Chapter 13

Waiting for someone to come back from the dead was a bit like waiting on a first date when you've arrived exactly on time to pick her up but – surprise, surprise – she's not ready yet. You end up sitting on her sofa, twiddling your thumbs and trying to ignore the cat who is regarding you distastefully from under the chair across the way. Lestrade pulled out his mobile and thumbed, once more, through the text messages that had arrived one after another without a single response from him. Bloody bastard had been dead a year and he could still read the DI's mind. They had sent him scrambling through London like a bloody lunatic and brought him back to UCH where he was now pacing outside the morgue. Waiting. For a bloody diva. All that was missing was the cat. Though, to be honest, the nurses, orderlies, and lab technicians who kept shooting him speculative glances as they passed him by were just as good.

**Wrong.**

**Stop hyperventilating. Of course I'm alive.**

**I need to look at the body.**

**The man murdered at UCH.**

**Meet me at the morgue. 8pm.**

So here he was, waiting on Sherlock Holmes like some bloody dog. Because of course it was Sherlock. Who else would it be? Who else did he know that liked to interrupt press conferences by sending texts? At least he had only sent it to Lestrade this time and not the whole bloody conference room. How he did _that_ particular trick they had never been able to figure out. It theoretically shouldn't have been that hard to figure out but it would have required the cooperation of the press and – most importantly – the surrender of their phones. Like that was ever going to happen.

Lestrade slipped his phone back into his pocket and sighed. It was ten past eight and Sherlock, in typical fashion, was late. Thank god it was a weekday at least. The girls were at their mother's and he didn't have to worry about scrambling around to find a new sitter – or at least apologizing profusely and paying extra to the current.

"Have somewhere better to be, Lestrade?"

_Oh, Christ, that voice,_ Lestrade thought to himself. _That voice could bring entire armies to a standstill. _How had that reporter described it once, plastered underneath that ridiculous picture of him in that deerstalker? Ah, yes: like a jaguar hiding in a cello. _Quite right too_, Lestrade's inner voice remarked as he forced himself to turn his head and look at the figure that had seemingly materialized out of thin air just down the corridor.

Knowing that he was meeting Sherlock Holmes, having been familiar with the man for over a decade, he had no doubt that was who was walking towards him now. The gait, the voice, and the idle twitch of his fingers as if he was forever playing an invisible violin against the line of his leg – it was all Sherlock. Still, he was different. Different enough that if Lestrade had not been looking for him, expecting him, and had simply passed him by on the street he had to admit that he likely would not have recognized him. Oh, some part of his brain would have whispered: _That bloke looks a bit like Sherlock_, but that would have been the end of it.

Lestrade was used to seeing the dead mirrored in the living.

If he hadn't known for sure, for an absolute certainty, that he was looking at Sherlock Holmes then the mere fact that he wasn't in some snazzy custom tailored suit that cost more than Lestrade made in a month or in that damnable coat would have thrown the Detective Inspector off right away. Possibly even enough that he wouldn't have even bothered to look closer. Instead, the (former?) Consulting Detective was dressed in a hip length brown leather jacket. Real leather no doubt, because Lestrade can imagine a great many scenarios (everything from nuclear war all the way down to crawling back to his cheating ex wife and begging that she take him back) actually happening before Sherlock would skimp on his clothing. Underneath the jacket was a pale violet shirt, the top button undone, and tucked into a pair of dark wash jeans. Jeans. Christ's sake. If the lack of suit or jacket hadn't done him in the jeans would have. Jesus. Jeans. He didn't even think Sherlock was aware that jeans actually existed except for on the bodies of others.

"Not really," Lestrade croaked honestly, still staring. Now that Sherlock was closer he could spot the other differences. His hair was short, short enough that it couldn't curl and had been dyed a deep russet that was not dissimilar to Mycroft's color, though the color on Sherlock's head was a little lighter. He was thinner too. Even thinner than he had been before a certain army doctor waltzed into the consulting detective's life and forced him to eat on a semi-regular basis. He hadn't seen Sherlock's cheeks that hollow, those cheekbones that sharp since… Well, since he had discovered Sherlock huddled under a bridge without a heartbeat and enough needle marks in his arm to make a saint swear. And Lestrade wasn't a saint. "Jesus. Tell me you're not using," he blurted out before he could stop himself, still staring.

Sherlock's eyes, usually a shade of blue or gray with the occasional fleck of green but now – because of the hair or the clothes or god knows what – the color of well polished emeralds shot through with webs of grey, narrowed in surprise. "That's the first question, is it? Honestly, Lestrade, I'm surprised." He pulled up his sleeves and flashed unmarked flesh in the DI's direction. "No. I'm not. Unless of course you count smoking, in which case my answer would be very…"

Lestrade held up his hand to silence the other man. "Fucking hell, Sherlock," he gasped out. "Give me a minute. I'm trying to not go into shock." Sherlock raised an eyebrow in judgment but waited wordlessly at the DI's side as Lestrade bent over and braced himself with hands on his knees, forcing himself to breathe. _In one-two-three-four, out one-two-three-four._ He could feel Sherlock's gaze on him, could practically feel the whirlwind turn of the cogs inside of the detective's brain as he deduced the last eleven months of Lestrade's life. _Bloody bastard, _Lestrade thought viciously. _He can probably tell that I had slightly off, cold Chinese for breakfast this morning by the way I combed my hair or some such nonsense. In one-two-three-four, _he reminded himself as he stared pointedly at the other man's shoes. _Out one-two-three-four. _

"Done yet?"

Lestrade sighed. "Honestly, no I'm bloody well not Sherlock. I was there. I watched them check your vitals. I watched them wheel you away. _I watched them bury you_. Obviously all faked," he jerked his chin in Sherlock's direction, "Well done on that, but I didn't know. God damn it, Sherlock, _I didn't know_."

"That was the point," the consulting detective pointed out unhelpfully. "I really need to look at that body. I don't _think_ there is anything important but I can't be sure. Not now."

Cautiously, still unsure whether or not his heart was going to be able to handle standing and staring Sherlock in the face, Lestrade straightened. "Can I?" he asked bluntly, motioning with his hand.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and gave Lestrade a look that clearly told the DI that Sherlock's estimation of his intelligence had gone down considerably. "If you must," He huffed as he held out his hand. Lestrade hesitated for just a moment and then took it. It was warm and solid in his grip, and very, very real. He held it for a moment, staring at the long, pale expanse of flesh held between his own fingertips. If he stretched that finger just a bit…yes, there was a pulse thudding away beneath the scant covering of flesh.

Lestrade closed his eyes and took a deep breath. _In, one-two-three-four. Out, one-two-three-four. _"I should punch you."

Sherlock inhaled sharply, his breath giving an odd little hitch at the end. "I'd rather you didn't but you would entirely be within rights to do so," he replied blandly, completely at odds with his reaction.

The Detective Inspector let go of Sherlock's hand and rubbed the heel of his hand between his eyes. It was starting to pound right there – a nasty, jabbing beat that made him feel like someone was trying to break out of his skull using a pick axe. Christ, he needed a drink. "Why?" he asked wearily, looking at the detective. "I know you were probably expecting 'how?',' he added, seeing the faintest glimmer of surprise dart across Sherlock's face, "and I'm sure you have some tongue tying, long winded, dizzying, absolutely _brilliant_ explanation that makes you sound smarter than god, but Sherlock – _why?_"

The look the not dead detective gave him made Lestrade feel like he was some sort of collection that Sherlock had shaved off of a body or scraped from the earth and put on a slide to be observed through the lens of his microscope. He was also finding it increasingly difficult to care. _The bloody nerve, looking at me like that_, he fumed inside. Well, not exactly fumed. But he would have fumed had he not felt so incredibly tired. No, not tired. Well, kind of tired. Mostly like he had somehow managed to be shredded into a million pieces without actually dying. _If anyone should be handing out looks of judgment it should be me!_

"I had no choice." Lestrade's skepticism must have showed on his face. "Please, Lestrade, I am many things but it has been a very long time since I was suicidal. Even if I was, it would take a hell of a lot more than a half-clever trick to get me there. I jumped because Moriarty made me."

"But he…?"

"Was dead at the time I jumped? Yes, I am well aware of the facts. The head of the snake might have been cut off but its body was still flopping about under the last directions it received." He pursed his lips tightly, half raising his hand. "Moriarty had leverage, Lestrade, simple as that. Now, if we could go look at the body? We're going to start attracting undue attention." He ducked, cat like as ever, into the morgue, flinging the door wide in a clear indication that he expected Lestrade to follow him.

_What the hell? _Lestrade found himself commenting internally as he stared after leather clad shoulders. _It's not like I have anything better to do tonight._

* * *

Sherlock practically danced around the body, lips twisting, eyes darting as he studied everything about him – even if the only important thing was the slash across his throat. _Right-handed attacker. Serrated knife. No hesitation. Steady hand._ This was a case where he needed to be sure, absolutely sure. He couldn't miss anything. There had been a handful, a mere _unforgivable_ handful of cases that he had never managed to solve – this was most certainly not going to turn into one of them. He wouldn't let it.

_Ugh. People looook soooo disgusting when they're dead. I've never been able to decide if it is an imPROVEment over what they look like when they're living. YOU like them BETTER when they're deeaaaad, _Moriarty taunted knowingly.

_Not always,_ Sherlock found himself arguing back. _Not John._

_So quickly you jump to John, _Moriarty shoved his hands in his pockets and pouted, his lips twisting downward in an over exaggerated frown. _You're RUINING aaaaallllll my fun!_

Sherlock snorted softly and bent to take one last look at the man's neck, the puff of his breathing causing all the fine hairs on the man's chest to ripple. _Between us it is always about John. Always has been – in life or death. I won't let you kill him, Moriarty. If the past year hasn't taught you that then you are more stupid than I thought._

_SILLY Sherrrrlock. All men die – it is what they DO. Even John._

"Sherlock?"

The detective snapped out of his inner argument, much to Moriarty's amusement, and tried to not glower at Lestrade. "Early thirties, recent release from prison where he did time for violent crime, likely assault. No friends or family, not that he's close to anyway, because he went straight from prison to a homeless shelter. Cause of death: obvious. Even Anderson couldn't miss this one. Killer is right handed, about six feet tall, military training, and despite his military training opted to use a hunting knife rather than something of military issue. He's killed before, killed frequently. Absolutely no sign of hesitation - no remorse. It's all blatantly obvious; you should have been able to identify him," he motioned to the body on the slab, "quite quickly. No matter, I'm sure you'll take care to update your search with the appropriate parameters."

"Sherlock!" Lestrade's sharp voice cut across the tail end of the detective's rapid fire summary like the crack of a whip and Sherlock started, just a little, beneath it. "Is this it then? Are you just going to fit yourself back into my investigations like nothing happened?" he asked in response to the questioning arch of the other man's eyebrow.

"Of course not," drawled Sherlock, fighting the urge to look amused. "While that would an entirely satisfactory response it is not one I think you, or most people, are capable of making. Besides, even if that were true, this all on its own is barely a six – and that is being generous."

"Then why look at this body? If I didn't know better I'd say… well, never mind."

"And what do you presume to know, Lestrade?"

The Detective Inspector was quiet for a very long moment as he stared down, eyes unseeing, at the dead man. "Have you been to see John yet?" he asked quietly. The tone of his voice made Sherlock go still as death beside him.

_Not today. Why? What happened? God, he can't be dead… it was just a dream. Tell me that he is still alive, Lestrade, tell me he is still alive! _He screamed inside of his head. Instead, he forced his face to remain calm and looked over at the DI. "No. Not in the way that you mean."

"Jesus, Sherlock," Lestrade swore softly, if vehemently. "You should go see him. You can't let him go on thinking that you're dead. No. Don't you dare give me that look," he added sharply. "Don't. You. Bloody. Dare. I don't know where the hell you've been for the past eleven months or what the hell you've been up to and honestly I don't really think I want to know, but John… God damn it Sherlock, what did you think was going to _happen?_ No. NO!" he all but shouted as Sherlock opened his mouth to respond. "I'm used to your shit. Honestly, now that the initial shock has worn off the fact that you're alive doesn't even really surprise me. Not really. Dying because you jumped off a building is too ordinary, too boring. No, when you go out for real it will be flash and bang and bloody puzzles. But you have to understand what you _did_, Sherlock. _You have to_. What do I know about this man?" he jabbed his finger angrily at the body. "I know that this morning John Watson identified him as a man who tried to kill him. I took his report. I took the bloody photos for evidence – _I saw what was done to him_." Lestrade ran a hand through his mostly silver hair and looked away, jaw clenched tightly against the moisture threatening to bead in his eyes. "Worse than that," he continued, his voice choked. "I saw what he had done to himself. You may have been the one that fell from the roof of Barts but it was John that died, Sherlock. Do you understand me? _He died_. His body just hasn't entirely caught up with that fact yet. But don't you worry," he added bitterly, turning back to glare at Sherlock. "It's getting there."

Sherlock shut his eyes against the fury and despair in the other man's face and voice, unable to face the accusations he saw mirrored there. It was bad enough that they replayed constantly in his head and had done so even before he had realized the gravity of John's situation. He didn't need to see his miscalculation – his _failure_ – written across everyone else's face. "Do you think I don't know that?" he asked hoarsely. "Do you not think that I have watched as he gets weaker? As his clothes get looser? As the man I knew completely disappeared?" Sherlock sighed. "I should have just killed him."

"_John_?" Sherlock's eyes flew open at Lestrade's sharp cry of distress.

"No, not John," he corrected wearily. "Him." He motioned downward. "I wanted to kill him," he added softly. "Instead I left him and he was turned into a message. A flashing, neon sign: _Dear Sherlock Holmes_…"

Lestrade stared at him, stared him while he stood and fingered the nearly empty packet of cigarettes in his pocket. He had, much to Mycroft's silent disapproval, smoked a handful of times throughout the day, ducking up to the roof after his brother had cleared his throat pointedly a half dozen times. That made almost two entire packs in one day – somewhat excessive, even for him. He was jittery, practically vibrating out of his skin. At this point he wasn't sure how much of that was anxiety, how much was hunger and sleep deprivation, and how much was the nicotine.

"You've been watching," Lestrade murmured, his eyes going wide as they looked back and forth between Sherlock and the corpse. Compared to Sherlock he was a little slow – but then, who wasn't? – but he was a veteran Detective Inspector who had closed an impressive amount of cases all on his own before Sherlock came sauntering into his life. "It was you…"

"Of course it was me," Sherlock snapped irritably, forcing his fingers to let go of the cigarettes and instead tapping at his jacket sleeve as he thought. "He was trying to kill John." He ground his teeth in frustration and looked the Detective Inspector. "The message at the crime scene – that was for me. They're going to try again. They're going to try and try and _try_ until they succeed. Until John's dead." He just about jumped out of his own skin when Lestrade's fingers gently closed over his own and carefully pried them up from where they were now attached to his other hand, digging away at the tender skin on the back like his life depended on it.

"We won't let that happen," Lestrade told him carefully; unaware that he had fallen into his _everything will be okay_ voice even though his face was still set in stern, punishing lines. "I promise you, Sherlock. You'll fix this. No. _We _will fix this. Now," he added, letting go of the other man's hands. "It's Monday night and I have got nothing better to do so you are coming back to my flat. I am going to pour myself a very generous drink and then you are going to tell me in simple, easy to understand terms what the bloody hell is going on."


	14. Chapter 14

**Day 334**

The bruising was finally starting to fade. Now instead of an impressive array of purples he was sporting a rainbow made up entirely of greens and yellows with a few hints of blue still lingering in the most damaged places. John looked in the mirror and carefully prodded the mustard yellow patch near his eye. The swelling had finally gone down enough that he was looking a little more human and a little less monster of Frankenstein. He was on track for looking presentable enough to go back to work next week, which would make Sarah happy. She hadn't sounded too horribly pleased when his sick day had turned into a sick week.

Part of him felt bad for putting her in a pinch but most of him couldn't be bothered to care. Maybe she would finally fire him. He didn't find the idea to be all that likely. She would keep him on out of pity if nothing else. John sighed and stared at his reflection. "I should just quit," he told himself. He really should. It would just be better for everyone. Well, everyone but him. He didn't stay with the clinic because he needed the money, Christ knows Sherlock had left him enough of that. He stayed because without he was left with a truly empty life. No army. No surgery. No cases. No thrill of the hunt and pride of the capture. No dark haired detective.

The clinic was the only bloody thing left to him and he was loathe to let it go.

Old John would have quit. Good John would have quiet. Jon-before-Sherlock would have quit.

_You're good, John, always good. Sometimes too good._

"Well, not anymore you idiot," he breathed as he set about making himself a cup of tea, studiously ignoring the variety of food that had suddenly sprung into existence in the fridge. Mrs. Hudson, for the first time in months, had come bustling in Monday afternoon with armfuls of groceries and had set about stocking his cupboards with a limited amount of _tsking_. He appreciated the sentiment even if he privately thought it an awful waste of food. Maybe he could donate some of it – or better yet, hand it off to some of the homeless that hung around. Whether or not they had been part of Sherlock's network he had no idea but he made it a point to feed them or hand out money whenever he was able. It was the least he could do. His concession towards her generosity, because God forbid he offend Mrs. Hudson, was a single piece of toast with jam.

Carefully, mindful of his still sore ribs, he eased down into Sherlock's chair and set both tea and toast on the nearby table so that he could answer the phone suddenly chirping at him from his pocket.

**Figure you might be getting sick of keeping**

**yourself company. Drinks tonight? GL**

John blinked, reread the text, and then reread it again. "What the hell," he muttered, fighting the urge to shrug as he tapped out a quick response. "I'll throw it up anyway." Almost instantly he had a reply from Lestrade confirming a time and place and with a small, quiet thrill he slid the phone back into his jacket pocket. "Well John Watson," he said out loud. "That's that. He'd laugh if he could see you now - an adrenaline rush because I'm going out for drinks with a mate."

_Don't be ridiculous. I'd make some snide comment you about going on a date with Lestrade_, Sherlock's voice drawled. _And you'd turn a funny shade of red and stammer out that it's not a date and that you're not gay – not that there is anything wrong with that – and either storm down the stairs or up to your room, depending on how annoyed you were. I'd go back to playing my violin or dissecting eyeballs or something like that. See? Business as usual._

"Shut up, Sherlock," John growled and drank his tea.

* * *

It shouldn't have surprised him that he ended up at the cemetery, but it did. It had been a long time since he had come any day but Sunday. It was one of the many activities that his heart and mind skirted from and filed under the _'hurts too much'_ heading. Having accepted Lestrade's invitation for the evening, God help him, the interior of 221B had suddenly felt stifling. He needed to get. No, he _had_ to get out. He needed to walk until it hurt and take in great gulps of air until his lungs burned. Once, what seemed like forever ago, it would have taken him several hours to reach such a state; now he managed it just by limping along to Regent's Park.

Even after resting on a park bench for half an hour, indulging in his favorite new pastime of 'playing Sherlock' and trying to deduce everything there was to know about those that wandered past him, his chest still hitched uncomfortably with every breath. He hailed himself a cab and climbed on in. Instead of heading back home though he found himself standing inside his favorite florist staring at the display of premade bouquets. In the months since Sherlock's death flowers had become his number one expense. He now spent more on flowers in a month then he had previously spent in an entire year or two – and that was even accounting for the elaborate "I'm sorry I ran off with Sherlock" arrangements he had bought numerous girlfriends. He didn't know why, exactly, he kept buying Sherlock flowers. If he bothered to stop and think about it he supposed it was because when left all alone, naked of adornment, the shining black tombstone just looked lonely.

John didn't like the idea of Sherlock being alone. So he bought flowers, something to share the space with the dead detective.

The arrangement that caught his eye today was a bundle of yellow and white chrysanthemums dotted with the elegant arch and curl of purple-and-blue irises. It was beautiful and completely different from what he normally purchased. Normally he found himself drawn to flowers that reminded him of the detective: dark or pale, elegant, streamlined, and understated. This was positively bright and cheerful and not Sherlock at all. He bought them anyway. Now he found himself standing in front of that polished black stone, the outline of his figure and the brilliant flash of the flowers reflected back out at him. Careful of his ribs he crouched and removed the faded orchids and placed his newest offering in their place.

"I thought I heard you. Sunday night. Before I got jumped," he finally remarked into the quiet. "It's not unusual, hearing you. I hear you in my head all the time. In beginning, in the first weeks after you died I heard you in every single voice. God, if a therapist heard this I'd be sectioned." John scrubbed his hand over his face. "I've sat in our bloody flat and thought about it for three and a half days now, telling myself that it was just in my head. Of course it was in my head. You're… dead. And yet… God, for just a moment. For just a single, blessed moment you sounded so fucking real, Sherlock. So real." The doctor's voice broke ever so slightly on the last word and he cleared his throat roughly.

"You know, sometimes I wish that I hadn't run into Stamford that day. That I'd never met you. I'd decided to kill myself, you know. Go home and put a bullet in my head. And then I met you and you were mad and brilliant and utterly wonderful – even when you left heads in the fridge and eyeballs in the microwave and used my toothbrush to clean bodies." John gave the headstone a wry smile, a thousand memories mirrored in his eyes. "Sometimes I wish that I'd never met you, but mostly I'm glad. So glad. For eighteen months I got to be best mates with the most brilliant man in the world, never mind what Mycroft might say about that," he added with a nasty little twitch to his mouth and a broken off laugh. "You made me better; you made me more than what I had been – even when I had been everything that I'd always wanted to be."

"I don't know why I'm telling you this," he commented to the headstone. "It's not like you can hear me. Even if you could you wouldn't be listening. Odds are good you'd be playing your violin or whipping up a batch of flesh eating bacteria on the kitchen table. Stuck here, beneath the dirt, I suppose you've got nothing better to do than listen to me. Even if you can't hear me. God, I've give just about anything to hear your voice even one more time. Not a recording. Not a memory. Not a bloody hallucination in my head. But you. Just once, Sherlock. Just once." John sighed. "I've spent three days sitting in our flat drinking tea trying to convince myself to be a normal person. To get up and just go. To… god, I don't know. And yet it's there, flitting around the corner of my brain in a goddamn endless whisper. I thought I heard you, then, right before I tried to die. I thought I heard you shouting my name.

"I've spent three days wondering if that is what it's going to take. I've spent three days mulling over the idea that if I go out, if I get myself almost killed, then I'll get to hear your voice. It's a dangerous thought, Sherlock, I could easily spend the rest of my life trying to die and not caring whichever way things turned out."

John reached out and tapped the headstone lightly. "I don't know what I'm going to do, Sherlock. I really don't. It's an intoxicating thought but… I'm a bloody war hero. I'm a soldier. I'm a doctor. I've broken laws for you, I've killed for you, I'd have died for you if you'd have let me," he acknowledged frankly, "but I don't like the idea of you turning me into some sort of bloody Twilight character. I don't think I want to spend the rest of my life chasing death in the hope that some twisted, fucked up combination of chemicals and memories in my brain will make my ears hear you. It's got to be all or nothing," he curled his fingers around the top lines of the headstone and shut his eyes, "and I don't know what to do."

He stood at the graveside for a moment longer and then, with a decisive nod of his head, he turned and walked back towards his cab.

* * *

Sherlock watched John go, jaw clenched so tightly he thought his teeth might actually shatter from the force he was exerting against them. Pulling his new phone – thank you Mycroft/Anthea/whoever bloody else was involved – he thumbed opened the phone and reread the latest text from Lestrade.

**He's agreed to drinks. 7pm.**

He held the phone to his forehead and shut his eyes.

_Please John_, he begged silently._ Just a little bit longer._

* * *

He was sitting in the little sandwich shop with a clear view of the curb in front of 221B and munching on a plate of chips when the black cab pulled up and John Watson climbed wearily out. Instantly his entire demeanor changed, his shoulders straightened, his mouth tightened, and his eyes narrowed with interest. Methodically he wiped the salt and grease from his fingertips and retrieved his phone from his pocket.

**Doctor arrived. Continue?  
**

He kept the phone in his hands and stared at it, waiting for the answering buzz. It came just a handful of seconds later.

**_Yes._ **

He wiped his mouth with the napkin and rose to his feet, nodding politely to the man behind the deli counter as he tossed a tip down onto the table. Outside the door he paused and looked around, his fingers flying over the phone's keys.

**Going up. Will keep you informed**.

He slipped his mobile back into his jacket pocket and glanced up at the sky. "Beautiful day," he murmured to himself and then he turned and after a moment of hesitation at the door he slipped inside and headed up to 221B Baker Street.

* * *

John sank into the chair with a sigh and allowed his head to drop into his hands. Christ, he ached. He'd over done things, again. It was amazing how easy it was to over do things these days. He really shouldn't feel proud over that realization, but he did. Outside the door someone's footsteps squeaked on the stairs and he stifled another sigh, this one of mingled disgust and frustration. "Mrs. Hudson?" he called out, hoping to catch the landlady before she barged in with another ridiculously large amount of groceries. God help him if she brought up something home cooked. He would feel obligated to eat it and he really wasn't feeling up to spending half the evening kneeling next to the toilet while his stomach flipped and flopped all over the place in response to the ongoing war between his logic and his emotions in which his emotions inevitably won and he tossed up whatever remained in his stomach.

"Mrs. Hudson is out, I'm afraid. Doing a bit of shopping with her sister."

John froze.

The door creaked a bit and then clicked as it was swung shut. "Picked the lock, I suppose?" he asked, lowering his hands.

"Child's play."

John folded his hands in his lap and stared at the man standing just inside the doorway. He was ordinary. Nondescript. Nicely dressed, but not too nicely. His dark suit was of the mass-made, bought in a shopping mall variety and his tie was crooked. Just an ordinary bloke on his way home after a day's work. No one would ever look twice at him. No one would ever remember his passing."I don't suppose you're going to tell me who you are or why you're here – actually," John corrected himself, "I can guess why you are here."

"Quite right, too," the man acknowledged as he slipped further into the room. "You never can fool a soldier. Can't fool cops either. They always know why you've come." He informed the doctor, glancing around the flat with interest. "Nice place you've got here," he added.

"I suppose it is," John replied, a lovely feeling of calm slipping over him. "It's served me well." He followed the man's progress as he moved nonchalantly through the room. The soldier in him spared the closed door to Sherlock's bedroom – and more importantly, the Browning lying in the bedside table drawer – a quick and wistful glance.

"There's a skull on your mantle," the man remarked, sounding mildly surprised. Apparently skulls on mantles didn't rank very high on his weird-o-meter. Of course, given his line of work, John would have been a touched surprised if it had. "Did you know him?" he tipped his head at the polished bone.

"Nope. Never bothered to ask about him either. He's lived in this flat longer than I have so I suppose that entitles him to a bit of privacy. I don't imagine you'll tell me…?" he trailed off and motioned idly between the two of them.

The man unclasped his hands from behind his back and gave John his full attention. "A debt, or so I imagine. I don't really ask questions. They just make things messy and aren't really necessary to do the job. That's all I'm concerned with: the job. Apparently, they tried with an amateur the first time," he shook his head and sighed in disgust. "Honestly, it's embarrassing. You think people would learn – it's always better to hire a professional."

"Yes," John agreed, a rush of amusement welling up inside of him as Sherlock's word's echoed back at him. _There you go, you see – you were right… The police don't consult amateurs. _"I imagine that it is."

"Time to get on with it," the man informed him, removing a pocket knife from his suit jacket and thumbing it open. "I'm sorry about this," he told the doctor. "It's a messy way to go and takes some effort. Not how I'd have preferred to do it but..." he shrugged "instructions being what they were…"

John waved his hand. "Of course, of course," he murmured, his mouth going dry.

The man was on him in an instant, yanking it from the chair and throwing him across the room. John tumbled into the table sitting next to his chair, knocking it and it's topping of books to the floor with a crash. He followed, tripping over the table and knocking his head with ringing force against the leg of his chair on his way down to the floor. There was a noise behind him, the dart of footsteps and then a knee dropping to the small of his back. All of the air fell out of John in a long, pained _whoosh_ and his entire body went still as he felt the cold tip of the pocket knife press into the side of his neck.

_Guess I don't have to figure anything out Sherlock, _he informed his inner hallucination._ Seems like someone has gone and decided for me. Can't say I'm upset. I should be, but I'm not. It just saves me the struggle. God though, I wish my head would stop ringing_, he added, well aware of the complete, laughable stupidity of that last statement in comparison to both earlier statements and his current predicament. Of course, as deaths went, murdered on the floor of 221B within sight of the skull and the bloody Stradivarius was a far sight better than dying in the dirt of the alleyway.

He could live with this. Or die with it, as it were.

"Oh, no you bloody don't!"

There was a cry above him, startled, and cold rush and stinging sensation across the side and back of his neck. He could feel the heat of his own blood welling up between the parting in his flesh, a slow steady trickle dripping out across his skin in time to the beat racing inside his chest.

Behind him… what the fucking hell was going on behind him? It sounded like someone was… was… John's brain scrambled, trying to come up with an appropriate metaphor for the plethora of crashes and grunts and weird scratching noises that were filling his ears. _Watch out for the violin_, he mouthed, unable to actually get the words to come out of his lips. _It's valuable. Christ, how hard did I hit my head? _He blinked, straining to bring the book lying in front of his gaze into focus. It blurred further, multiples of the bookish outline suddenly swimming in and out of existence as something white and hot popped in his gaze. _I think I'm going to be sick_, he realized. _Just for once I'd love for my body to react to something by _not _throwing up_.

John turned his head, laid it against the cool expanse of the floor, and shut his eyes. _Where was the assassin?_ He wondered, trying to find the balance of breath intake that managed to get him enough air and not make his ribs scream at him. To say that they were unhappy about being flung into a table, smacked into the floor, and having someone's knee jabbed into them from behind would have been an understatement. Of course, if the bloody professional would ever come back and finish the job then he wouldn't have to worry about his ribs or the fact that they apparently had developed feelings of their own.

"John?"

_There it is again_, he commented to himself. _This is dangerous. I might just make it a habit._

"John? What did he do to you? John?" Cool fingers brushed at the nape of his neck, and up over the throbbing explosions of pain at his temple. "He tried for John again," the voice, suddenly clipped announced. "I'm at Baker Street. I need a cleanup crew. John probably needs a doctor. Oh, and you should call Lestrade." Something fell to the floor not far from his head and the noise made him wince. "Don't you die on me, John Hamish Watson. Don't you fucking dare!" he hissed in John's ear. "I have not spent three hundred and thirty four days gallivanting around in hell for this to end now. Open your bloody eyes and look at me!"

John opened his eyes and promptly shut them again.

"Oh no you don't," that unmistakable baritone voice growled, shivering across his skin. "I know this is hard, and this is not how I wanted to do this but – and you will listen very closely John Hamish Watson – you are going to open your eyes and you are going to live. If for no other reason than to apologize to me for making me look up that absurd Twilight reference earlier. It is cluttering up my mind palace and absolutely must be deleted. Honestly, John, is _that_ how you've occupied your time since I left?"

Long thin fingers wrapped themselves around John's shoulders and eased him upwards. The doctor found himself resting against the unmistakable feel and angles of human flesh, the smell of leather tingling in his nostrils. For some odd reason it calmed his stomach but he kept his eyes steadfastly closed.

"John," it was all but a whisper, a gentle entreaty that swept down over the curve of his cheek and buried itself in his ear. He opened his eyes and even with the ringing in his head and the white bursts of light across his vision he could pick out the unmistakable cutting slash of cheekbones rising above him.

"You left me," John whispered, letting his eyes slide shut again.

"Never again, John," Sherlock whispered into his hair as his fingers pressed against the scratch on his neck, stemming the slow flow of blood. "Never again."

"Good," John choked out, tightening his fingers around unmistakable feeling of a silk shirt. Beneath his ear beat the steady echo of a living heart. "That's… _good_." A small cry slipping from his lips, John folded in on himself and began to sob into the scent of leather, cigarette smoke, and home.


	15. Chapter 15

"You have to tell him," Lestrade instructed over his beer. "No. Ignore that. You can't just tell him, you have to go back to him. You have to go home, Sherlock. That's the only way."

Sherlock sighed and leaned back in the shoddy, if delightfully comfortable, chair and completely ignored the bear that Greg had gotten for him. Alcohol on an empty stomach and a nicotine soaked system? No thank you. Even he wasn't that stupid. He definitely wasn't bored. Given the circumstances he'd almost rather that he was. Bored, that is. Not stupid. God, never that. "I'll just paint a target on him again. Even ignoring what I do I'm not exactly…"

"… pleasant company?" the detective inspector supplied into the silence.

"Exactly," Sherlock sighed. "There will always be people trying to get me, trying to get to me. And John… John will always be a way in. It's safer for him if I stay away."

Lestrade laughed, choking on a mouthful of beer. "With all due respect to your astounding brilliance, you're wrong." The Detective Inspector put his beer down and leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. "You're right, you know," Lestrade told him bluntly, his voice suddenly very serious."He might get killed someday, because of you, god help him. Christ, there's a good chance that even _I_ will die someday because of you. But, Sherlock, even if you do put him in peril it cannot possibly be more dangerous than it is for him right now. If you're with him," he finished softly, "at least he'll fight back. At least he'll live while he can. You took that man's life away, the least you can do is give it back to him."

Sherlock put his head in his hands and didn't reply because what was there to say when everything had already been said?

They would give John a couple days to rest, recover and get bored, which in turn would give Mycroft the time to scour the city and a good portion of the surrounding world in hopes that Sebastian Moran would slip up and make himself visible. Unlikely, but they could hope. Then Lestrade would then invite the doctor out for drinks and John, being bored, would accept. While they were out Lestrade would do his best to get at least a little bit of alcohol into the doctor's system – "Trust me, Sherlock," the DI overrode the detective's objections, "this is the sort of thing that goes over better when you're not completely sober" – and then make sure he made it back to 221B. Sherlock would be there when they returned, playing his violin.

"You sure he'll know it's you?"

"I'm the only one that would dare touch that Stradivarius. And he would know my playing anywhere," Sherlock whispered. "My voice he might doubt. Likewise the sight of me. He's caught accidental glimpses and heard me speaking occasionally before, even if he didn't know. Even if he believed he was just going mad. But the violin…" Sherlock stood and crossed to window, staring out into the night. "That is something he will not doubt."

That had been the plan, anyway. Not a great plan, but a good one. A solid plan. On the scale of plans it landed somewhere considerably lower than "_successfully faking death by jumping off a roof_" – because really, what could top that? – but somewhere significantly higher than "_get into cab and drive off with a serial killer and not tell anyone_".

Of course it had all gone straight to hell in a hand basket when Sherlock had caught sight of a distinctly nondescript man slipping into 221B and had decided that such an abnormality must be followed up on.

Good thing, too.

* * *

The nondescript man, a hired killer judging by his shoes – _dressy, expensive, sturdy, made for ease of movement. Custom. –_ and the slight creases in his suit –_ gun, knife, knife, gloves_, had John on the floor and was kneeling on his back. Light from the window caught on the object in his hand and _Pocket knife. Two inch blade. Far too small to reach the heart. Gripping for stabbing, not slashing. Messy. Will require multiple wounds to bleed John to death. Not acceptable._

Like before, his body was moving before his mind had completely calculated the situation. That made twice now that his body acted without express direction of his mind. It was disconcerting but, more the point, it was exactly the right thing.

"Oh, no you bloody don't," he growled, the timbre of his words vibrating through his flesh all the way down to his toes. He crossed the room in quick, long strides; going up and over the coffee table without any indication that he had noticed that there was actually something in his way. Nor did he show any sign of even thinking about going around it. It would have added another step to his route. Unacceptable. A flick of his wrist and a twist of his arms looped the thin length of cord around the man's neck. _Three times_, his mind noted with detachment as he pulled, yanking the assassin off of John. He didn't even remember getting the weapon out. The man yelped, startled, hands instinctively rising to try and remove whatever was choking off his air supply. Sherlock grunted and looped the excess cord once around his palms to give him a better grip and pulled the assassin closer.

Their momentum took them to the floor and Sherlock hissed between his teeth as the man's elbow speared into his kidney, but he maintained his grip. He could feel the man's fingers digging desperately at the cord, could feel every twitch and every vibration of his torso as his lungs strained for oxygen. The man's feet hammered the floor, kicking and thrashing in an effort to gain some sort of leverage that would free him or at least allow him to get in a punch or a kick good enough to buy him a half second to seek freedom. Failing that, the man heaved and sent the duo rolling across the room.

Sherlock made no attempt to protect his head from impact with the coffee table. It was either get knocked in the face or let go of the cord gripped so tightly in his hands that his fingers had lost all feeling. Letting go of the cord was not an option, not even slightly, so a bash on the head it was. He had granted mercy once and where John was concerned he would not do so again. The stakes were too high. A bruise? A cut? Possibly a concussion? They were small prices to pay for the life of John Watson.

Beneath him the man's struggles grew weaker, sharper, and more frantic. He bucked and heaved and scrambled against the floor, both weaker and stronger all in the same moment. _Seconds_, Sherlock's inner voice told him as it counted off in its head, measuring the length of time that had passed since he had begun squeeze the life out of the man who was desperately trying to knock him into the table again. Stupid, really. The poor bastard should have realized by now that it wasn't happening. Sherlock wasn't letting go until every last ounce of life had drained from him. He had tried to kill John.

"Any other crime, any other person in the world," he whispered harshly in the man's ear as his body began to go limp. "And you would have lived to see the end of the day. But you tried to kill John and that, I'm afraid, is an unforgivable sin."

The would be assassin went limp underneath him, the last puff of Sherlock's whisper ghosting across unhearing ears. Sherlock held on with an unrelenting grip and forced himself to wait to the count of ten. He had to be sure.

When he was certain that the man was dead, Sherlock released his grip on the cord and eased the body to the floor, extracting his hands from the weapon and flexing his fingers to get the blood moving to them again. "John?" he called across the room, well aware of the desperation in his voice. His fingers were beginning to tingle unpleasantly as he pushed himself off the floor and staggered across the room. "John? What did he do to you? John?" he called again as shaking fingers punched numbers into the mobile pulled from his pocket.

It rang once on the other line and then a smooth, haughty voice filled his ear. "Now you call?" Mycroft is exasperated, if amused. "To what do…"

"He tried for John again," Sherlock snapped, surprised at the engulfing rush of rage filling him as his ripped themselves from John's still form on the ground and glared at the body lying half under the coffee table. His voice came out surprisingly even but his lips twisted in what was undeniably a snarl. "I'm at Baker Street. I need a cleanup crew. John probably needs a doctor." His arm was already halfway lowered, his thumb hovering over the '_end_' button before a thought occurred to him and he snapped the mobile back up to his face. "Oh, and you should call Lestrade," he added and without further explanation he hung up arguably the most powerful man in the world and tossed the mobile to the floor. The body at his feet winced at the noise it made.

Sherlock was on the floor beside John so quickly that he was completely convinced his knees had just given out and folded underneath him the moment his eyes detected the faintest quiver of movement in his doctor's form. _Four, _his mind muttered as he winced as well, the shock of his fall tingling through his knees and shooting up his thighs. _Visible contusion, left temple. Blood. Not a lot. Cut to the side of his neck. _"Don't you die on me, John Hamish Watson. Don't you fucking dare!" he hissed into John's ear as he bent over the inert man to look more closely at the neck wound. _Shallow. Jagged. Bleeding but not badly. _A sigh of relief, so great it stole every ounce of air from his lungs, rushed out of him. The relief was short lived, half a second at best, as his mind raced through the scenario he had walked in on. A tension, heavy and tight, coiled around his chest and squeezed until it was impossible for him to take another breath. _Most immediate danger: ribs_. He all but lay on the floor next to the other man. "I have not spent three hundred and thirty four days gallivanting around in hell for this to end now," he told John's ashen face. "Open your bloody eyes and look at me!"

Surprisingly, the doctor's eyes opened and stared into Sherlock's somewhat blurred gaze for just a moment. For one crystal, perfect second the two men held gazes and Sherlock tried to deduce the thousand and one things he saw flying across John's eyes. Then the doctor shut his eyes, squeezing them together with a tightness that made Sherlock's heart stop stone cold in his chest.

"Oh, no you don't," he growled into John's face. The beginning threads of anger, the type of anger born out of heart-stopping, soul-ripping fear, coloring his tone. He forced himself to stop talking, to shut his eyes and take a deep breath. Calm. He must be calm. Just this once. He could lose it later. "I know this is hard, and this is not how I wanted to do this but – and you will listen very closely John Hamish Watson ," he added more gently, "you are going to open your eyes and you are going to live." The only response from the man lying next to him was to press his eyes even more tightly shut. Sherlock had the awful, sinking feeling that if John had felt well enough to slap his hands over his ears then he would have. The detective forced himself to swallow and continued in a lighter tone, "If for no other reason than to apologize to me for making me look up that absurd Twilight reference earlier. It is cluttering up my mind palace and absolutely must be deleted. Honestly, John, is _that_ how you've occupied your time since I left?

If he hadn't been watching John with an intensity that would make anyone else in the world supremely uncomfortable he would have missed it. The faintest twitch there, at the corners of his lips. The faintest touch of mirth. Sherlock sat up and crouched over John. Gently he wrapped his long fingers around John's shoulders and eased him upward, sliding his arm underneath the wounded man when there was room enough to do so. He maneuvered until he had his back to the overturned side of John's chair and leaned against it, letting it support the weight of both men as he pulled John further into his lap.

The doctor still kept his eyes clenched firmly shut.

Sherlock leaned over the other man and stared down at the ruin of his face: at the fading bruises and the blossom of new ones. There was a smear of blood across one side of his face where the blood leaking from temple and neck had pooled on the floor and seeped beneath the press of his cheek. "John," he begged softly, willing the other man to open his eyes, to acknowledge him. He wanted, he needed John to look at him; needed the other man to make him real again, to let him know that he, Sherlock, was alive.

John slowly opened his eyes, wincing back from the filtered sunlight that filled the room. He was disorientated, in pain - _Concussion_ – and it was obvious to Sherlock that he was having a hard time seeing clearly but the doctor looked at him all the same. Sherlock stared back, stifling back a sob of relief as he finally, _finally_ saw the spark of recognition deep in that azure gaze.

"You left me," the doctor whispered, shutting his eyes. Sherlock felt every word like a stabbing sensation to his chest. Words, just words, and yet they caused him physical pain. He should be bleeding. His life should be flooding out of his chest but it wasn't. They were just words.

Sherlock shut his eyes and lowered his head until his lips were pressed into to the other man's hair. "Never again, John," he promised, his voice breaking as a handful of the tears he had been holding back broke free and slid down his cheek to fall into the strands of wheat-and-gray. "Never again."

At the rumble of his voice John reacted, curling into the detective's supportive embrace and clutching at his shirt and jacket like his very life depended on it. "Good. That's _good_," he uttered and then, like a dam had been broken inside of him, he leaned into Sherlock and sobbed.

English. French. German. Spanish. Mandarin. Arabic. He heard them all falling from his lips and into the doctor's hair. "Never again," he promised over and over in every language he knew. "Never again."

* * *

It felt like an eternity but in reality it was seven more minutes – almost exactly – until Sherlock heard the unmistakable sound of multiple sets of footsteps on the stairs leading up to 221B. He tensed instinctively, his mind racing through all the possibilities as he fought the urge to clutch the now silent doctor even more tightly to his chest.

"Who?" John whispered, struggling to sit up and peer over the over turned chair towards the door.

"Mycroft's men, most likely," Sherlock replied softly, indicating with a soft press of his hand that John should stay put. "But there is always the possibility that it could be more people trying to murder you."

"My gun is in your…"

"I know," Sherlock interrupted tersely. "But it's too late for that." The door to the flat opened.

"Mr. Holmes? Dr. Watson?" Sherlock kept his mouth shut and hoped that John would do the same. The doctor did. "I hear that the ducks are back in Regents Park."

"A bit late this year, if you ask me," Sherlock called back. "Mycroft's men," he added for John's benefit. "My brother is slipping. I thought he'd have people closer."

"I'll be sure to pass your comments along, Mr. Holmes," the first man replied, stepping aside to let a handful of other nondescript men in through the door. "We had to make sure the area was secure."

_Soldiers. Bullet proof vests. Enough hidden weaponry to take over a small country_, Sherlock noted, pleased that apparently Mycroft was taking this seriously. Still… he inhaled sharply. It was both reassuring and nerve wracking to have that much weaponry near John, his mind suddenly spinning with a half dozen scenarios in which these men turned out to be Moran's instead of Mycroft's.

_Oooooh… that'd be FUN! _Moriarty cried with a gleeful smirk. _And SOOOOO Sebby's style too._

"What is it?" John asked.

Sherlock willed, practically begged, some of the tension to leave his body. _Mycroft's men_, he told himself sternly. _They're Mycroft's men. Stop jumping at shadows that aren't even there! _"Nothing," he told the doctor. "Mycroft's overreacting as usual. I ask for a cleanup crew and he sends the whole bloody army." _And thank you for that, brother. Even if I am handling it badly._

Despite the strange screaming sensation in his head and desire to snap and bite at their helping hands, Sherlock let two of the soldiers take John from his arms. "Be careful of his ribs," he warned them, hauling himself gracefully to his feet as they moved the injured with practiced ease to the sofa.

"Ribs?" one of them asked, dropping to a crouch in front of John after shoving the table out of his way. The body of the assassin was already gone, whisked away by more of his brother's minions. No doubt they would be back soon to steam the rug and freshen up the place. They were Mycroft's men, so they would be disgustingly thorough and exact. When they were done Sherlock knew that it was highly likely that even he, with the memories fresh and screaming in his head, would be hard pressed to believe that he had killed a man here just moments ago.

It was for the best. The truth would distress Mrs. Hudson.

"Fractures to the seventh, eighth, and ninth – four days old. The assailant was kneeling on his back so it is possible they have fractured further or turned towards his lungs." Sherlock rattled off, not moving his eyes from John. "Also watch out for varying levels of bruising to abdomen, throat, and head - also four days old." John started beneath the other doctor's touch and turned his full attention back to Sherlock. "New injuries include head trauma - concussion likely, and a cut on his neck. It's shallow enough that it probably doesn't _need_ stitches but it would still benefit from them. Oh, and diminished physical condition brought on by approximately eleven months of malnutrition," he added softly.

Any blood that had remained in John's face left it then. "Bloody hell," he swore, staring up at the detective. Sherlock met his gaze and waited as he watched the disorientated doctor finish making the connections. "You prick. Jesus Christ, Sherlock, you were there! You've been… you bastard! _You __ fucking bastard_!" Sherlock had half a second to brace himself and then he went down, nearly getting knocked off his feet by the force of John's blow.

_And I thought his right hook was mean_, he thought to himself as he managed to find enough balance to keep himself upright. _Adrenaline rush_, he observed to himself as John stumbled and turned an ugly shade of white. _Gone_. Sherlock caught the doctor as he fell. "I deserved that," he told the doctor. His lip was bleeding. Of course it was. After a blow like that how could it not be? God damn it, it was going to get on his shirt. _Of course_, he reflected silently_, it was already headed for the bin so I don't suppose that this will make any difference_. "And, knowing you, I'm sure you would dearly love to punch me at least a half dozen more times. I accept that. I deserve it," he added softly as he sat the other man back down on the sofa. "But I'd rather the effort of punching me not kill you, so let's hold off a bit, yeah?"

He stood up and instantly the other doctor, who had wisely moved aside at the first glimmer of movement from John, moved back into place. "Alright then, let's just…"

"Why?"

He froze at the sound of John's voice and slowly turned back around. The other doctor had gone silent again, his mouth pressed in a thin line as he listened to the beat of John's heart. John stared at him, his jaw set in a familiar line and his blue gaze steady. It was his '_you are going to give me an answer, right now Sherlock, or by god I will kill you'_ face and not something to be trifled with. Sherlock fought back the grin that suddenly threatened to split his face. That was the old John, _his_ John, peeking through. Good. Good. He wasn't lost then. He could still be recovered. His self destruction had not crossed that inevitable line. Not yet.

"I couldn't let him kill you now could I?" He replied lightly, elegantly arching an eyebrow.

It wasn't until his words, slightly flippant, fell from his mouth that it occurred to him he didn't know which _'why'_ John had been asking him. Of course, if he thought about it, it didn't matter which '_why'_ the doctor had been asking him. The answer to all of them was the same.

_I could not let you die._

* * *

Deep in the depths of London a solitary man sat at a bar with a cold beer in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. He turned the phone over and over again, flipping it between fingers and palm. Fingers. Palm. Fingers. Palm. Fingers. Palm.

He looked to the clock over the bar and noted the time. Six o'clock. He checked the mobile one last time, just to be sure, even though he knew that it hadn't gone off again in the past hour.

Nothing.

He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a sip. "My move, Mr. Holmes," he whispered. "My move." He set down the beer and opened the mobile. He tapped in a short text and then hit send.


End file.
